The Anti-Surprise

All day, we had been hearing rumors that Barack Obama would make an appearance at the convention tonight. So when he strolled out onto the stage, I can't say I was really surprised. Please, thrilled, excited, yes. Surprised? No.

The excitement and energy of Obama's appearance was exactly what this convention night needed, though. While Bill Clinton and John Kerry made very good speeches tonight and the overall energy in the hall was good, the Biden speech was a bit of a low point. Yes, he was strong on the issues, but he sort of lost the crowd when he went into foreign policy territory, only regaining them when he started doing what VPs are supposed to do: hit at the other candidate. The end of his speech did not create the sort of raucous convention hall environment that we certainly saw last night. Having Obama arrive, however, put the mildly energetic crowd into a frenzy and left everyone nigh foaming at the mouth for tomorrow night. Invesco should be a roaring good time.

2 perspectives from Denver: Veterans, and youth

I've spoken with several veterans of U.S. military service in Denver, and unsurprisingly they mostly express strong support for the Democratic candidate. One outspoken Viet Nam vet was basing his support on his assessment of the lack of support for vets he percieved in Senator McCain's voting record.

Generally, however, I was hearing more "Pro-Obama" sentiment expressed than I was "anti-McCain" on Sunday, as the visitors to the city took on a distinctly Democratic leaning on the eve of the opening day's events. Oliver Lawrence, for instance, is an Air Force veteran of both Korea and Viet Nam, a fifth generation descendant of slaves who has lived in Georgia all his life. Taking in the pre-convention activities, he describes feeling a very different sort of energy among the delegates when compared to previous election cycles.

Oliver also spent the late 50s on duty in Wyoming, when duty sometimes meant babysitting ICBMs, as it did in his case. I chatted with him as we walked along Denver's 16th Street Mall Sunday evening. Most of the protesters had already left, (make no mistake, there were some present earlier in the day) on our way to listen to live music at "Jazz @ Jack's" where our waitress, Jenna, was looking forward to her first chance to vote in a Presidential election.

Asked about Biden as the choice for Vice President, Oliver replied immediately with entusiasm that, "He's a pit bull!" Suggesting that Senator Obama should "Feed him red peppers and turn him loose" to deal with those who are taking the low road in assailing Obama's suitability. He sees Biden as silencing most of the basis for doubting Obama had sufficient experience - a charge he obviously thinks lacks merit. Oliver's seen conventions and candidates come and go during his decades-long service in the Air Force. His assessment of Obama is that electing the Senator from Illinois will be a way to start correcting decisions that the current administration has made, though he notes that the extent of the correction needed means that progress will be slower than he'd like.

And Jenna? She's caught the bug for politics from her mother, who is informed and active in Denver politics. They moved to Denver from Idaho over a decade ago, and she wasn't quite old enough to participate at the voting booth in 2004. As we talked it became clear that while her boss has asked the staff not to display political affiliation while at work, she and her working peers are excited by the prospect of Colorado leaning more toward Obama than McCain, and hopes the state will express a majority support for his candidacy - they'd be proud of Colorado's electoral votes went into the Democratic column as we select our next President.

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Ken Salazar - Colorado Senator Interview at DNC Convention

Colorado Senator Ken Salazar was kind enough to give us a good deal of his time at the DNC Convention. This "mini-press-talk" consisted mostly of a discussion of Senator Biden, Colorado Water Rights, the energy problem and the economy.

Obama - Biden | Barack Obama Offers VP To Senator Job Biden

Obama VP: Biden, Clinton, Bayh, Kerry or Clark? Who? - DNC Convention

Any day or moment Senator Barack Obama will pick his vice presidential running mate. But who should it be? Senator Joe Biden? Senator Hillary Clinton? Senator Evan Bayh? Senator John Kerry? Or General Wesley Clark? I talk about these possible choices and who I favor, which is an Obama Clinton ticket.

The reason I favor an Obama / Clinton ticket is that it would reform the party and unity would be the word. I still hold it's the most exciting and electrifying of all of the possible combinations before us that are realistic.

Evan Bayh is a popular two-term Senator who comes from Indiana royalty, but outside that state, where can he be most effective? He's just not exciting in my view.

Senator Joe Biden is a fighter and well-known around the World. I think he would bring a lot to the Obama brand, but I'm just not sure he can move the voters like Clinton could.

Then we come to Senator John Kerry, who's ran before and for President. Senator Kerry would bring a large email list and donor base but I think Obama / Kerry would be seen as a match of two elites.

General Wesley Clark certainly has a compelling story, and a war record that surpasses that of John McCain. Clark's been a powerful ally to Obama and would make a great choice to bring liberals solidly into the Obama tent. But can he draw votes? That's the question.

For my money Clinton's the best choice, even with the negative energy she seems to draw from others. But Clinton's not far and away the best selection and I could be swayed to someone else if I knew they would bring votes. Perhaps Kerry could best do that. We shall known soon.

Clinton Cries, Buys New Hampshire Votes - Obama Fights On

First congratulations to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on her New Hampshire Primary win. Second, congratulations to Senator Barack Obama for the best speech of the night.

In this video, I assert that Senator Clinton's crying peformance was just that, a performance.



And I say this is so because the Clinton Campaign has a track record of staging people in place at events to ask pre-determined questions. This was done - for example -- in Newton, Iowa, where according to the Grinnell College newspaper...

On Tuesday Nov. 6, the Clinton campaign stopped at a biodiesel plant in Newton as part of a weeklong series of events to introduce her new energy plan. The event was clearly intended to be as much about the press as the Iowa voters in attendance, as a large press core helped fill the small venue. Reporters from many major national news outlets came to the small Iowa town, from such media giants as The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and CNN.

After her speech, Clinton accepted questions. But according to Grinnell College student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff ’10, some of the questions from the audience were planned in advance. “They were canned,” she said. Before the event began, a Clinton staff member approached Gallo-Chasanoff to ask a specific question after Clinton’s speech. “One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask],” she said.

In my video and here, I contend that the person who asked Hillary Clinton the question of how she was doing was a plant, and that the whole deal was planned. And my second reason for why Clinton ran is even more interesting.

This is a developing story, but I believe that Senator Clinton's campaign trucked in volunteers to vote for her in New Hampshire. The NH primary has a very loose system where a person can just come in and on the day of the primary vote declare an intention to move into New Hampshire.

If one checks the NH Secretary of State's office, they will see this:

January 8, 2008 PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY ELECTION DAY - Unregistered voters may register
and vote on this day.

And this...

WHO CAN REGISTER
New Hampshire residents who will be 18 years of age or older on election day, and a United States Citizen, may register with the town or city clerk where they live up to 10 days before any election. You may also register on election day at the polling place. The town clerk's office can inform voters of what proof of qualification they should bring to register.

There is no minimum period of time you are required to have lived in the state before being allowed to register. You may register as soon as you move into your new community.

I also have it from a good New Hampshire-based source that a person can walk in and tell the town hall representative that they intend to move to New Hampshire, and still be allowed to vote.

It's also known and documented that the Clinton campaign called and paid for volunteers to show up at rallies. That's right, paid for them.

By contrast, the Obama campaign volunteers that did come in did so on their own dime.

The open question I ask is how many New Hampshire Primary voters actually live in New Hampshire? The margin of difference between Senator Clinton's voters and Senator Obama's voters is so small that this question becomes an important one. Especially since the Clinton Campaign was facing a cash crunch. Where did that money go? Some of it went to paid people living in nearby states to come into New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, Senator Barack Obama fights on and has just picked up the endorsement of the largest union in Nevada.

New News. New email asserts that the NH Primary Votes were miscounted! See below..

News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government
09 Jan 2008

http://www.legitgov.org/

http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
Where Paper Prevailed, Different Results By Lori Price 09 Jan 2008

2008 New Hampshire Democratic Primary Results --Total Democratic Votes: 286,139 - Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008

Hillary Clinton, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 39.618%
Clinton, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 34.908%
Barack Obama, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 36.309%
Obama, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 38.617%
Machine vs Hand:
Clinton: 4.709% (13,475 votes)
Obama: -2.308% (-6,604 votes)

2008 New Hampshire Republican Primary Results --Total Republican Votes: 236,378 Machine vs Hand (RonRox.com) 09 Jan 2008

Mitt Romney, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 33.075%
Romney, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 25.483%
Ron Paul, Diebold Accuvote optical scan: 7.109%
Paul, Hand Counted Paper Ballots: 9.221%
Machine vs Hand :
Romney: 7.592% (17,946 votes)
Paul: -2.112% (-4,991 votes)

NH: "First in the nation" (with corporate controlled secret vote counting) By Nancy Tobi 07 Jan 2008 81% of New Hampshire ballots are counted in secret by a private corporation named Diebold Election Systems (now known as "Premier"). The elections run on these machines are programmed by one company, LHS Associates, based in Methuen, MA. We know nothing about the people programming these machines, and we know even less about LHS Associates. We know even less about the secret vote counting software used to tabulate 81% of our ballots. [ See also CLG's Coup 2004 and Yes, Gore DID win!.]

Please forward this update to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to the Newsletter list can sign up: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg.

Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries.

CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price, Manager. Copyright © 2008, Citizens For Legitimate Government ® All rights reserved. CLG Founder and Chair is Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.

Obama Maintains Iowa Lead By 4 Points In New Poll 32 Percent; Clinton Third

A new poll released today , January 2nd, has Senator Barack Obama ahead of both former North Carolina Senator John Edwards with 29% and New York Senator Hillary Clinton at 27%. Delaware Senator Joseph Biden received 5%; New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson 2%; Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd received 1%; Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich 1%; and 3% were undecided.

This new poll comes on the heels of the much criticized Des Moines Register poll which had Obama with a six point lead over Clinton, followed by Edwards.

When Republicans were polled on whom they would support in 2008 for the Republican Presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney led with 30%; followed by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee with 28%; Arizona Senator John McCain 16%; former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson 13%; former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani 4%; Texas Congressman Ron Paul 4%; California Congressman Duncan Hunter 1%; and 4% undecided.

“The Republican race continues to be extremely close although at this point the momentum is with Mitt Romney and John McCain who is making a strong bid for third,” said David E. Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision, LLC, who conducted the pol of 600 Democrats and Republicans.

But the poll does not take into account the impact of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich's instructions to his supporters to back Senator Obama as a second choice.

NY Times Slams Hillary Clinton's "Experience" Claims

Well, it's about time. Today's NY Times really took Senator Clinton to the woodshed over her claims of experience, accusing her of speaking in broad generalities and not specifics about her time as First Lady, and in the process damaging the view that she's the most experienced presidential candidate. A must read.

The Long Run
The Résumé Factor: Those 8 Years as First Lady

By PATRICK HEALY
As first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton jaw-boned the authoritarian president of Uzbekistan to leave his car and shake hands with people. She argued with the Czech prime minister about democracy. She cajoled Roman Catholic and Protestant women to talk to one another in Northern Ireland. She traveled to 79 countries in total, little of it leisure; one meeting with mutilated Rwandan refugees so unsettled her that she threw up afterward.

But during those two terms in the White House, Mrs. Clinton did not hold a security clearance. She did not attend National Security Council meetings. She was not given a copy of the president’s daily intelligence briefing. She did not assert herself on the crises in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda.

And during one of President Bill Clinton’s major tests on terrorism, whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Mrs. Clinton was barely speaking to her husband, let alone advising him, as the Lewinsky scandal sizzled.

In seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, Mrs. Clinton lays claim to two traits nearly every day: strength and experience. But as the junior senator from New York, she has few significant legislative accomplishments to her name. She has cast herself, instead, as a first lady like no other: a full partner to her husband in his administration, and, she says, all the stronger and more experienced for her “eight years with a front-row seat on history.”

Her rivals scoff at the idea that her background gives her any special qualifications for the presidency. Senator Barack Obama has especially questioned “what experiences she’s claiming” as first lady, noting that the job is not the same as being a cabinet member, much less president.

And late last week, Mr. Obama suggested that more foreign policy experts from the Clinton administration were supporting his candidacy than hers; his campaign released a list naming about 45 of them, and said that others were not ready to go public. Mrs. Clinton quickly put out a list of 80 who were supporting her, and plans to release another 75 names on Wednesday.

Mrs. Clinton’s role in her most high-profile assignment as first lady, the failed health care initiative of the early 1990s, has been well documented. Yet little has been made public about her involvement in foreign policy and national security as first lady. Documents about her work remain classified at the National Archives. Mrs. Clinton has declined to divulge the private advice she gave her husband.

An interview with Mrs. Clinton, conversations with 35 Clinton administration officials and a review of books about her White House years suggest that she was more of a sounding board than a policy maker, who learned through osmosis rather than decision-making, and who grew gradually more comfortable with the use of military power.

Her time in the White House was a period of transition in foreign policy and national security, with the cold war over and the threat of Islamic terrorism still emerging. As a result, while in the White House, she was never fully a part of either the old school that had been focused on the Soviet Union and the possibility of nuclear war or the more recent strain of national security thinking defined by issues like nonstate threats and the proliferation of nuclear technology.

Associates from that time said that she was aware of Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and what her husband has in recent years characterized as his intense focus on them, but that she made no aggressive independent effort to shape policy or gather information about the threat of terrorism.

She did not wrestle directly with many of the other challenges the next president will face, including managing a large-scale deployment — or withdrawal — of troops abroad, an overhaul of the intelligence agencies or the effort to halt the spread of nuclear weapons technology. Most of her exposure to the military has come since she left the White House through her seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

When it came to the regional conflicts in the Balkans, she, along with many officials, was cautious at first about supporting American military intervention, though she later backed air strikes against the Serbs and the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo.

Her role mostly involved what diplomats call “soft power” — converting cold war foes into friends, supporting nonprofit work and good-will endeavors, and pressing her agenda on women’s rights, human trafficking and the expanded use of microcredits, tiny loans to help individuals in poor countries start small businesses.

Asked to name three major foreign policy decisions where she played a decisive role as first lady, Mrs. Clinton responded in generalities more than specifics, describing her strategic roles on trips to Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland, India, Africa and Latin America.

Asked to cite a significant foreign policy object lesson from the 1990s, Mrs. Clinton also replied with broad observations. “There are a lot of them,” she said. “The whole unfortunate experience we’ve had with the Bush administration, where they haven’t done what we’ve needed to do to reach out to the rest of the world, reinforces my experience in the 1990s that public diplomacy, showing respect and understanding of people’s different perspectives — it’s more likely to at least create the conditions where we can exercise our values and pursue our interests.”

Crisis at Home and Terror Afar

There were times, though, when Mrs. Clinton did not appear deeply involved in some of Mr. Clinton’s hardest moments on national security. He faced a major one in 1998 — the bombings of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and subsequently whether to bomb Afghanistan and Sudan. Just days after he acknowledged to his wife, the public and a grand jury that he had had a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Mr. Clinton ordered cruise missile strikes on targets suspected to be a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and a chemical weapons factory in Sudan.

“It was the height of Monica, and they were barely talking to each other, if at all,” said one senior national security official who spoke with both Clintons during that time.

Asked if she talked to the president about the military choices or advised him, regardless of their personal problems, Mrs. Clinton was elliptical.

“I was very proud of him, he did what he thought he was supposed to do as president based on the best intelligence he had,” she said. “And he was well aware that there would be those that would certainly criticize him for it.”

Friends of Mrs. Clinton say that she acted as adviser, analyst, devil’s advocate, problem-solver and gut check for her husband, and that she has an intuitive sense of how brutal the job can be. What is clear, she and others say, is that Mr. Clinton often consulted her, and that Mrs. Clinton gained experience that Mr. Obama, John Edwards and every other candidate lack — indeed, that most incoming presidents did not have.

“In the end, she was the last court of appeal for him when he was making a decision,” said Mickey Kantor, a close Clinton friend who served as trade representative and commerce secretary. “I would be surprised if there was any major decision he made that she didn’t weigh in on.” (Mr. Clinton declined an interview request.)

But other administration officials, as well as opponents of Mrs. Clinton, are skeptical that the couple’s conversations and her 79 trips add up to unique experience that voters should reward. She was not independently judging intelligence, for the most part, or mediating the data, egos and agendas of a national security team. And, in the end, she did not feel or process the weight of responsibility.

Susan Rice, a National Security Council senior aide and State Department official under Mr. Clinton who now advises Mr. Obama, said Mrs. Clinton was not involved in “the heavy lifting of foreign policy.” Ms. Rice also took issue with a recent comment by a Clinton campaign official that Mrs. Clinton was “the face of the administration in foreign affairs.”

“Making tough decisions, responding to crises, making the bureaucracy implement decisions that they may not want to implement — that’s the hard part of foreign policy,” Ms. Rice said. “That’s not what Mrs. Clinton was asked or expected to do as first lady.”

Not Overstepping Her Bounds

Mrs. Clinton said in the interview that she was careful not to overstep her bounds on national security, relying instead on informal access. During the preinaugural transition, for instance, she sat in on some meetings about presidential appointments at the invitation of Warren Christopher, who directed the transition and became secretary of state in the first Clinton term. Participants recalled that she would mostly speak when Mr. Christopher called on her, and tended to make points about placing more women, minority members and allies in key jobs.

She said she did not attend National Security Council meetings, nor did she have a security clearance — though she was briefed on classified intelligence before going on some important diplomatic trips.

“I don’t recall attending anything formal like the National Security Council,” she said, “because I had direct access to all of the principals. I spent a lot of time with the national security adviser, the secretary of state, other officials on the security team for the president. I thought that was both more appropriate, but also more efficient.”

Mrs. Clinton declined to say if she ever read the President’s Daily Brief, a rundown of the latest intelligence and threats to national security provided to the president each day. “I would put that in the category of I-never-talk-about-what-I-talk-to-my-husband-about,” she said. But she indicated, and other administration officials confirmed, that Mr. Clinton would sometimes talk to her about contents of the briefing.

“Let me say generally, I’m very aware of and familiar with what the P.D.B.’s actually are, how they work, what they include,” she said. “And it wasn’t always through the Clinton administration — when I went to Bosnia, for example, I had a full briefing from the military commanders there about what the situation was like.”

Mrs. Clinton said she was “only tangentially involved” in Mr. Clinton’s first major overseas test, whether to send American soldiers after the Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid and his forces, a raid that ended in 18 American deaths. Asked if she had pressed for an invasion, she said she had acted “more as a sounding board” for Mr. Clinton.

The same was true during the military confrontation in Haiti in 1994, over restoring the exiled president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which she favored and drew lessons from about joint command of American armed forces.

Asked about her role in Somalia and Haiti, Mr. Christopher said in an interview, “She wasn’t at any of the meetings in the Oval Office or cabinet room, and didn’t take any formal role that I saw.” Mr. Christopher is supporting Mrs. Clinton for president.

Nor was Mrs. Clinton a memorable player on Rwanda. Former White House officials say that no one — not the national security team, not the president, not the first lady — was seriously pushing for American military intervention to stop or slow the unfolding genocide there; the administration’s focus was on confronting the ethnic bloodshed in the Balkans. Mrs. Clinton declined to comment on Rwanda.

A Stand for Women’s Rights

The foreign policy achievement most often credited to Mrs. Clinton came in 1995, with her speech to the United Nations conference on women in Beijing, where she declared that “human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights.” She also tangled with Chinese officials, she said, and refused to bow to pressure to soften her remarks.

“She had a good balance of being firm on these issues, even if they clearly covered Chinese sins, but also understanding the need for good relations with China,” said Winston Lord, then the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, who briefed and accompanied her on the trip.

In visits to Bosnia and Kosovo after the American-led bombing of Serbia, she entered war zones before officials believed it was safe for her husband to go and acted as a spokeswoman for American interests rather than as a negotiator. Mrs. Clinton had become a champion of the bombing campaign, and many officials — including Madeleine K. Albright and Richard Holbrooke in the administration and Tony Blair, then Britain’s prime minister — turned to her at times to stiffen Mr. Clinton’s resolve to take on Serbia.

“Bill, you’re the president,” was a refrain that several administration officials said she used when Mr. Clinton was torn between his advisers.

Mrs. Clinton has disagreed with Mr. Obama’s support for presidential-level talks with leaders of nations like Iran and North Korea, but she said that the Balkans had taught her another lesson: know your enemy. She praised Gen. Wesley K. Clark, then the NATO commander, and Mr. Holbrooke, the administration’s envoy on the Balkans, for socializing and drinking with Serbia’s leader, Slobodan Milosevic, as a means of gauging his strengths.

“He’s there — you don’t learn something about him by pointing at him across the ocean,” she said. “If you do have to engage in a bombing campaign, you’re going to have a much better idea of how much pressure it’s going to take to finally break him.”

Her personal interests also drew her to Northern Ireland, where she believed she could help foster peace as a female leader bringing together women split by the sectarian divide. She played host to a memorable meeting, one of the first of its kind, of Catholic and Protestant women in Belfast. “It gave everybody a safe place to come together and start talking about what they had in common,” Mrs. Clinton said.

As she prepared to run for the Senate, Mrs. Clinton took increasing interest in Israel and Middle East peace, touchstones for Jewish voters, among others, in New York. She was not at the Camp David talks in the summer of 2000, but she did pepper the Middle East peace envoy, Dennis Ross, with questions, like whether the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat was too much the revolutionary to ever make peace, Mr. Ross recalled.

The Middle East situation led to Mrs. Clinton’s first big foreign policy-related problem as a candidate. In 1999, she sat silently, but with apparent discomfort, through an event on the West Bank as Suha Arafat, the wife of Mr. Arafat, accused Israel of poisoning Palestinian women and children with toxic gases.

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who at that point seemed likely to be her Republican opponent in the 2000 Senate race, sharply criticized Mrs. Clinton for not confronting Mrs. Arafat over her remarks and for kissing her goodbye afterward; the incident also led some Jewish groups to be critical of the first lady.

Mrs. Clinton has often said that she learned from the experience and would not make the same mistake again.

Dallas Morning News Endorses Barack Obama For President

U.S. Senator Barack Obama added another high-profile endorsement to his growing list of them, this one from the Dallas Morning News. Here's what the DMN wrote today:

We Recommend: Barack Obama
Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination
12:00 AM CST on Sunday, December 23, 2007

America is at a historic crossroads as a woman, a Hispanic and an African-American vie for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Two of those candidates, Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, were finalists for our recommendation – not because of ethnicity or gender but because they most closely aligned with our positions on major domestic and international issues.

Mr. Obama is our choice because of his consistently solid judgment, poise under pressure and ability to campaign effectively without resorting to the divisive politics of the past.

Race is not an overriding factor for us. But it is undeniable that America has failed to heal its racial wounds, including here in Dallas. We need a motivated leader capable of confronting the problem, and no candidate is better equipped than Mr. Obama. His message isn't about anger and retribution. It's about moving forward.

There's been lots of noise about his lack of experience. It is a legitimate concern, considering he's a 46-year-old first-term senator. But Mr. Obama's experience in elective office matches that of Abraham Lincoln before he became president. And he has served more time on Capitol Hill than four of the past five White House occupants.

If youthful inexperience were such a liability, it has failed to resonate despite his opponents' best efforts. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, flip-flopped over a plan to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. Her campaign accepted donations from questionable sources. When Mr. Obama's support recently surged in early primary states, her campaign tried to smear him over drug use in his youth.

It's a tired ploy that has failed in four previous presidential elections. Bill Clinton twice won election after admitting he'd smoked (but not inhaled) marijuana. George W. Bush won despite an alcohol problem and drunken-driving conviction at age 30.

Mrs. Clinton called Mr. Obama "irresponsible" and "naive" for saying he would talk to leaders of rogue nations like Syria and Iran. Considering the current failed strategy of confrontation and diplomatic isolation, we think Mr. Obama is wise to include direct negotiations among his tools to reduce regional tensions.

Mr. Obama drew criticism for saying he would pursue terrorists, if necessary, by sending troops into Pakistan. The fact is, U.S. troops have been going into Pakistan for years in pursuit of terrorists. All Mr. Obama did, in effect, was to keep that option open for the future. To say otherwise is to declare Pakistan a sanctuary for America's enemies.

Mr. Obama, the son of a white American mother and black Kenyan father, spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country.

His life experience gives him a unique perspective and a greater ability to build diplomatic bridges.

We don't always agree with his positions, but we recognize his potential to unite disparate political factions and restore cooperation between the White House and Capitol Hill.

Americans are tired of divisive, hard-edged politics. Democrats would inspire a refreshingly new approach by choosing Mr. Obama as their 2008 candidate.

Barack Obama Ahead of Clinton in NH; McCain Gains On Romney in NH

Just on the heels of a poll that had Clinton ahead of Obama in New Hampshire and which I stated was misleading , USA Today / Gallup has released a new poll that reports Obama is ahead of Clinton 30 percent to 28 percent, according to the Boston Globe.

Meanwhile, John McCain is rising in the same state; he's only behind Mitt Romney by three percent, 28 percent to 25 percent.

Obama Leada In Iowa, Stunning CNN in The Process!

Yep. Here's the news from ABC : Barack Obama's ahead 30 percent, 26 percent for Clinton, and John Edwards at 22 percent. Wolf Blitzer can't seem to stand that Obama's ahead of Clinton. They didn't mention that, or the Des Moines Register Poll, or the latest poll reporting Obama's lead at 4 percent.

Instead, CNN's Blitzer's focusing too much on other matters like the CIA leak, and totally ignoring Senator Clinton's major gaffe on Pakistan.

The Clinton News Network can't stand the news that Obama can win the Iowa Caucus.

Barack Obama Wins Las Vegas Debate - Iowa Independent and CNN Polling Say So

33 percent of persons responding to a CNN-After-Debate Poll online reported that Senator Barack Obama was the winner of the CNN Las Vegas Democratic Debate.

Indeed, both CNN's poll and the Iowa Independent reported Obama as the winner as have other bloggers. Iowa's point of view is strongest as that state has the first major voter test in January. Here's what Douglas Burns of the Iowa Independent wrote:

Obama Exposes Regional Difference With Clinton As Debate Turns For Him
by: Douglas Burns
Thursday (11/15) at 23:12 PM

[Commentary] U.S. Sen. Barack Obama tonight turned in his strongest presidential debate performance and exposed a clear regional difference with front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Is $97,000 a lot of money? In most of Obama's Illinois and just about all of Iowa the answer to that is "yes," which makes Obama's position on the question of whether to raise or lift the cap on Social Security taxes more reasonable to Hawkeye State voters than the New York shape-shifting of Clinton.

As it stands, the first $97,500 of a person's annual income is subject to the Social Security tax. Obama supports lifting that to shore up the future of the system while Clinton went with the nostalgia card, suggesting that the she could resurrect the macroeconomic picture that prevailed under her husband and cause the Social Security problem to disappear without hard choices. She suggested that popping the cap would hurt middle-class Americans and argued that in some parts of the nation (namely high-priced New York City which she represents) $97,500 isn't a lot of money. It would be interesting to hear her make that argument in Audubon County, Iowa, where the average home is worth half that much, $49,000.

Douglas Burns :: Obama Exposes Regional Difference With Clinton As Debate Turns For Him


In the CNN Nevada debate on the University of Nevada Las Vegas campus, Obama said only 6 percent of Americans make more than $97,500 and added that Clinton's use of numbers amounted to a Republican-style manipulation.

"This is the kind of thing I would expect from Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani," Obama said in perhaps his sharpest frontal political assault on Clinton.

Obama joined U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, a longtime member of the Judiciary Committee, as having the most solid answers on a question related to appointments of judges. Biden showed a clear understanding of the process, and has the scars from decades of fighting the culture wars on center court -- Supreme Court justice hearings in the Senate.

But Obama's answer connected more. A former constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, Obama said he wanted to look for candidates who aren't ivory towered academics but rather people who understand the vulnerable.

Obama also earned significant points with the Hispanic community for supporting drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants -- a controversial issue on which his chief rivals either disgree with him or have heavily nuanced positions.

After watching Obama, Clinton and former U.S. Sen. John Edwards dust each other up in top-tier skirmishing, Biden, the Delaware Democrat and venerable senator, appeared as the steady old hand, perhaps the man you'd give the ship's wheel to this instant.

"Who among us knows what they're doing?" Biden asked.

Well, you ...

Biden's answers had the usual thoroughness, touches of Senate-speak, to be sure. But he stopped himself short when the penchant for long-windedness seemed about to take hold. Obama had nearly double the amount of "talk time" as Biden so in a sense the comparison of the two senators in the debate format is fantastically unfair.

In the arena of international affairs, Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, exhibited his superior stature on the issues, noting that he had spoken recently with key figures in troubled Pakistan, even before President Bush. Biden also refused to pander on the issue of merit pay for teachers. Who decides whether a teacher is meriting? It makes more sense, said Biden, the husband of a teacher, to base increased pay on whether a teacher obtains advanced degrees.

North Carolinian Edwards barreled ahead with his populist message -- and people in Nevada, based on the crowd reaction, appeared to be in a buying mood. He ripped Clinton for being a defender of a "rigged" and "corrupt" system, and while acknowledging that he, too, has changed positions over time (such as on the aforementioned drivers' license question), he said Clinton seems to take seemingly two-faced positions in real time.

"There's a difference between that (changing one's mind) and saying two contrary things at the same time," Edwards said.

And thinking about key pockets of voters you have to give labor to Edwards tonight. Edwards noted that with Democrats controlling the White House and Congress in the 1990s, the working class saw health-care killed by big business but the passage of a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Strong stuff from Edwards -- and we know labor is listening. You could almost call for the debate for him using this calculus alone.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson stylistically had a better-than-usual debate perfomance. But for Richardson this comes down to one answer. He said that in some siutations human rights are more important than American security interests -- perhaps a good turn of phrase for an ambassador to the United States but a major opening for Rudy or Republicans to run with in a general election -- and something Hillary Clinton may have to consider if she looks to Richardson as a running mate as is widely speculated. Even in the middle of western Iowa one could hear the wheels turning in the heads of conservative consultants on this one.

Richardson had a no-nonsense answer on drivers' licenses for immigration which came as he articulated a comprehensive immigration reform package. With federal policy failing, states have no choice to pick up the slack and attempt stopgap measures like the drivers' license proposal.

"My law enforcement people said it's a matter of public safety," Richardson said.

Clinton started the night with a misfire -- joking that her pantsuit was made of asbestos, presumably so she could handle the heat. Asbestos jokes aren't funny to Iowans over 30 who had to go to schools in run-down buildings.

Clinton's strongest moments came in explaining the role of gender in the campaign.

"People are not attacking me because I'm a woman," Clinton said. "They're attacking me because I'm ahead."

Clinton had a strong answer on how to handle tainted toys from China: have a third-party investigator go over there. But she was effectivley backed into a box on the question of potential war with Iran because of her vote to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. Obama and Edwards continued to hammer her on that, and her nuanced explanation seemed lacking, giving rise to her opponents' strategy to postion her as the most hawkish of the leading candidates on the Democratic side. Clinton did offer a detailed answer on this in an interview a few weeks ago with Iowa Independent.

Where Chris Dodd is concerned my biggest thought on his performance is connected to something Dr. Steven Kraus of Carroll observed the other night at the Jefferson-Jackson dinner: Dodd, a U.S. senator from Connecticut, and Obama clearly have respect for each other.

Dodd is simply a classy senator who can answer questions with reliable competency. Conventional thinking is that the Southwest will determine the 2008 election and that a Richardson vice presidential nomination makes sense because of this. But Dodd is fluent in Spanish as I saw first hand when Lorena Lopez of La Prensa and I conducted a joint interview with him. If Obama gets the nomination Dodd complements him in a number of ways as a running mate -- including his ability to campaign in Spanish.

And yes, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, also stood on the stage.

Mancow Mueller, Clinton / Peter Paul Story Death Threat - Recorded Discussion - EJFA.Org

This is an update of our earlier story on the death threat Radio Talk Show Host Mancow Mueller says he received after he had former Hollywood business man Peter Paul on his show Friday.

I've just received from a source a copy of the radio show audio file where Mancow discusses the death threat he received with James Nesfield of the Equal Justice Foundation (ejfa.org) on Mancow's radio show, Monday, October 29th.

Here's what was said in text form:



Mancow: Listen, I had a guy on named Peter Paul on Friday.
James Nesfield: Yes. I know.
Mancow: Last week. And want to tell you, I had, a, uh, a very high level call over the weekend, and it was very frightening to me.
And..
James Nesfield: It should be.
Mancow: And I'm being sincere.
James Nesfield: No. I believe it. I...Listen. We were at our ISP, where we host the site. We had a attack from Russian and Chinese hackers.
Mancow: My. Uh. My family was threatened. And it was uh. I know the source, and it's a very dangerous source, and I'm really, uh, nervous about talking about your video, cause I think some very powerful people are going to be very upset about me talking to ya.
James Nesfield: You're right. I've been threatened too.

The "movie" they're talking about is called "Hillary Uncensored" and it's a detailed and hard-hitting documentary that has been playing to audiences at colleges around the country. It's drawn a large web-based following , and is continuing to be offered for view by any group that will ask.

What is the movie about? Well, I like WorldNetDaily's description:

"Hollywood filmmakers normally inclined to support candidates such as Sen. Hillary Clinton are working quietly behind the scenes to put the finishing touches on a documentary alleging the New York Democrat committed felonies to get elected and assisted her husband in defrauding a major donor."

The "major donor" is Peter Paul, and you can learn more about the story here.

The rest of the conversation is in the audio file below.

The audio file is here:

Mancow On Death Threat

Please listen to it. But you may be asking what the "so what" is here? Well, some have claimed that the Clintons have a way of associating themselves with people who in some way eliminate those who can block their path to power. Or as one blogger put it, "This is what happens when you have dirt on the Clintons."

The point is, if this can even be connected to the Clinton's it spells m-a-j-o-r t-r-o-u-b-l-e if the news is spread to a wide audience. It speaks to a lust for power that may even be greater than Hillary Clinton's desire to serve the American People.

Presidential Polls - "Eligible Voter" v. "Most Likely Voter" Important

How many times this year have you seen a presidential poll that says it surveyed "most likely voters"? Chances are you've seen or heard this a lot -- almost every day. But think. How many times have you listened to someone use the term "eligible voter"?

Chances are, not a lot.

This difference reflects poll manipulation in action. Eligible Voters are those people old enough to voter. Period. But the designation "Most Likely Voter" blocks young people from consideration in polls because only older people are considered. It's a very important difference because...

" In A Journalist’s Guide to Public Opinion Polls, another 1992 situation is described in which additional changes in eligibility procedures dramatically altered the polls. In this example, the authors document how CNN’s change from "eligible voter" to "most likely voter" in the latter days of the ‘92 campaign, impacted the Bush-Clinton numbers by a full six percentage points... overnight!

It's also interesting that CNN's matched with Clinton in the example above. CNN uses the term "most likely voter" today, in what seems to me like an attempt to skew the polls toward people who are more conservative and thus more likely to vote for Senator Clinton over Senator Obama.

Then CNN reports on the results of such out-of-wack reports nationwide, making people think that she's got it in the bag.

Nope.

This is because the "Most Likely Voter" approach consistently avoids surveying new voters, according to Ruy Teixeira, at the Joint Fellow at the Center For American Progress, and who claimed that the Gallup Poll's design benefited more older, more conservative voters who were more likely to vote for Bush in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in this election.

The polls also don't pick up cell phone users. Again, according to Teixeira,...

"Cell phones are yet another thing that pollsters are scrambling to try to figure out how to deal with. The thing that mitigates the cell phone problem is that most people who have cell phones also have landlines. The number of pure cell phone users is relatively small, though it is growing fast. However, even if you confine your intention to that group, there is some evidence that by excluding the cell phone-only users, it is a group with a fairly distinct demographic profile which leads to a certain kind of politics. They tend to be poor, they tend to be renters. There is some evidence that excluding them from polls does skew the polls slightly."

In addtion, there's every indication to believe that cell-phone-only homes are near 25 percent of the voting population now.

One dynamic is clear in the 2008 Presidential Election to this point. While the youth vote is driving campaigns, especially Senator Obama's effort with its reliance on social networking online tools commonly used by young people, and Ron Paul's almost totally internet-based campaign surge, the polls and the mainstream media are all but ignoring the youth vote, thus creating the climate for what will be the most suprising election in history.

CNN / YouTube Debates - Senator Joe Biden Answers My "In God We Trust" Question

This was my question number 36 in the list of videos presented at the CNN / YouTube Debates:

The cathedral behind me is the perfect backdrop for this question. This quarter reads "United States of America." And when I turn it over, you find that it reads "liberty, in God we trust." What do those words mean to you? Thank you.

The First Debate of the Caucus

Well, the first democratic debate has come to an end, and as the political pundits over at MSNBC interview each other and talk about who looked the best, I’ll make the call to arms – bloggers: start your fingers!

For starters, to those of you who don’t know exactly where Hillary, Barack, and John Edwards stand on the issues: don’t feel bad. None of us do. The three front-runners coming into the debate have continued their firm stances of not having any firm stances. Hillary is roughly in favor of leaving some people in Iraq, Barack is more or less in favor of leaving no residual troops, and John Edwards is definitely from a poor, southern family. That’s about all they gave up in their continued campaigns to sound passionate without offering real solutions. Oh, and they’re all Christian. That matters to some people, I know.

If you want to know what their stances are – please just check their official sites, because there’s no point in going through a middleman when the information is so readily available. I’ll put the links at the end, if I can figure out how.

Now, to those of you who don’t know where the lesser-known candidates stand: shame on you! For the first time in a very long time, we have a great cross-section of democrats that are all ready to lead our country into a renaissance of peace and understanding. Any one of these candidates would be an unprecedented leap forward from our current administration, and every one has ideas that are both novel and refreshing. But as is the case with so many things in life, the best ones are flying under the radar. So here they are: the candidates without $20 billion….

Not that my opinion should mean anything to anybody other than myself (please just read about the candidates and make a decision on your own), but I’m officially stating that I feel Bill Richardson (Governor of New Mexico) is the best candidate for president of the United States Of America that we’ve had in decades. For virtually every question he was asked, he had a well thought out and decisive answer prepared, even if he wasn’t asked the same questions as the other candidates. He had multiple-points that he attempted to get to in the 1 minute allotted to him per answer. Admittedly, he doesn’t seem to have mastered the art of being concise with his speech, but that just tells me that he was more prepared than anybody else and he knows that there isn’t a quick, 1-minute answer to these difficult questions. His speech was honest (admitting once that he was the last of the candidates to call for Alberto Gonzales’s resignation, partially because Gonzales is Latino) and his opinions were clear and well stated. The moderator once mentioned that Richardson has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize four times, and he was the only one to propose a way to give universal health care without raising taxes (which correlates with his track record in New Mexico, but again – check his site for facts. Blogs are for opinions.)

However, I’m not here to blow smoke up Governor Richardson’s ass, as every candidate is worth mentioning. Standing out from the crowd was former Alaskan representative and senator Mike Gravel. His speech was loud and often accusatory with radical ideas and an aggressive style, but frankly: that’s what we need. He was the most vocal against the Bush administration, but was also opposed to the other candidates that would pander to said administration by trading more money for a long-term timetable of withdrawal and taking any action that wouldn’t result in immediate change. The only other candidate looking for such quick action is Richardson whose timetable is “the end of this calendar year” but Gravel offered a virulent path to that end: a call to congress to make a law that would make it a felony for President Bush to continue the war in Iraq. His idealism may be a bit far-fetched, as he would need 67% of congress to over-rule the President’s obvious veto, but the idea is the sort of progressive thought that liberals are looking for.

Another stand-out in the field of candidates is senator Joe Biden, who came across as the most intelligent and professional of the group, even if his opinions are less radical than Gravel’s. Also, despite his great track record he doesn’t have the diplomatic experience that Richardson does. Biden is a very well spoken candidate who advocates a complete withdrawal from Iraq and a quick end to the war. Unfortunately, he has a similar approach as Hillary, Barack, and Edwards in that he seems fine with a slow withdrawal and has no brilliant new ideas to make the changes we all want to see. He does have the intelligence, passion, and experience to run the country though.

Dennis Kucinich, like always, stands out as a passionate and intelligent individual. I’ve been a fan of Kucinich for years, and it’s a shame that once again I see him picking the wrong fights and choosing the wrong places to make a stand. When not one of the other 7 candidates would endorse his plan to impeach Vice President Cheney (this caucus is all about uniting, not further dividing) he pulled out a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution and held it up while explaining that Cheney was going against what the country stands for and needs to be held accountable. A great point, and a good picture that we’ll likely see again during this race, but it certainly didn’t help his popularity. Richardson was right to say that the American people want an honest candidate, but a level of discretion is advisable to somebody involved in a popularity contest. And make no mistake: this is the grandest of popularity contests.

Senator Christopher Dodd also came across as both intelligent and well spoken, but his opinions were little more than regurgitation of everybody else’s stances. He was neither controversial nor particularly memorable, so his presence is more that of a strong benchwarmer than anything else. He reminds me that even the least memorable democratic candidate is infinitely better than the options that the other side has, and we would be lucky to have Dodd as a president, even though I don’t see him making many waves this year. But it’s still early, and we may hear from him yet – he certainly has the capacity to lead the democrats, and we could all rejoice if he were our next president.

As for the three front-runners, they don’t need more press, so I won’t spend as much time talking about them. Hillary was very well composed and presented herself like a President. Her pearls were a bit extravagant (who cares about a $400 haircut when you’ve got a $10,000 necklace?), but I’m not one to make a decision based on superficialities so that’s the end of that. Barack wasn’t his usual self, but that’s not to say he isn’t still deserving of his large following. I was first made aware of him three years ago, and to this day I like the guy. My only problem (like most people’s problem with him) is the lack of experience: it’s more than signing bills and pulling the troops out, and his continued reluctance to take any firm stances would keep me from voting for him. I’d love to see him take the vice-presidency, and then take over after 8 years of internship. That’s a distinct possibility. As for John Edwards: he’s the cookie-cutter candidate that we get at least one of every four years. Just like Al Gore before him and countless others that I won’t waste my time mentioning, he’s got the key phrases (“my Lord” was mentioned, of course) and his look is both clean-cut and conservative (appropriate, considering his approach). He doesn’t represent change – just a solid step away from the current regime.

So what should we all take away from this debate? Hope - tons and tons of hope. Every single candidate up on that stage was a good remedy to the bunch of stubborn misfits that we have in place right now, and no matter what happens – we’ll be much better off in 2009 than we were before. These candidates all represent more than a change of primary color in the executive branch: they represent a change in philosophy and approach. Every single one agrees that war has to be 2nd to diplomacy, not the other way around. They are all more willing to talk about the issues than to give each other grief (even if only one of them was willing to sign Governor Richardson’s agreement not to sling mud during the caucus), and they are all qualified leaders. We are terribly lucky to have this group vying for our votes, and 2009 will prove to be a great year in American history.

So do yourself a favor, and watch the future debates, keep track of the candidates, and know that whatever happens: voting democrat in 2008 is going to be a good decision regardless of your usual party affiliation.


Official sites/candidacy sites:

Bill Richardson

Mike Gravel

Joe Biden

Dennis Kucinich

Christopher Dodd

Hillary Clinton

Barack Obama

John Edwards