Senator Barack Obama Picks Up Six Percentage Points In Iowa Poll

Even with Presidential Candidate John Edwards recent annoucement of his problems with his wife's spreading cancer, and Senator Hillary Clinton's buying of support for the Iowa governor, Senator Barack Obama picked up six points in a poll of Iowa Democrats by Zogby on March 27th, 2007. It's Edwards 27 percent, Clinton 25 perent, Obama 23 percent, and the error is +- 4.5 points, so it's anyone's race.

This makes the race too close to call, even with the "bought" advantage of Senator Clinton.

Hybrid Cars - Sexy Female Celebs - Bauer's Worldwide Transportation

We all know that hybrid cars are good for the environment, but did you know how many sexy Hollywood celebrities have them? What do Selma Hayek, Cameron Diaz, Patricia Arquette, Alicia Silverstone, Donna Mills, Ariana Huffington, Carole King, Alexandra Paul, and Susan Sarandon have in common?

We find out as The Rolling Stones sing "Anybody Seen My Baby? See the video. But we can tell you Kendra Wilkinson needs one. You can get hybrid cars Limousines for rent at Bauer's Worldwide Transportation at www.bauerslimousine.com

Chris Matthews - Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton Jealous Of Senator Barack Obama

On Chris Matthews "HardBall" show he asserts that both former President Bill Clinton and Senator Hillary Clinton are jealous of Senator Barack Obama, and gives reasons why. Watch the video below:

Senator Clinton Pays Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack Debt; Vilsack Endorses Her

Wow. I just saw this story behind the Story over at The Blue State. Here's what I read:

Yesterday, as it had been expected for almost a week, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack officially endorsed Hillary Clinton. There may have been two reasons behind that move.

First, Clinton will likely pick a Midwesterner as her VP -- possibly Vilsack or Evan Bayh. Secondly, the Iowa Governor has a debt issue that Clinton agreed to help pay off. "Before ending his presidential bid on Feb. 23, Mr. Vilsack had accumulated a debt of about $430,000," said the Caucus Blog. "The Clinton campaign has agreed to help erase at least some of that debt. A fund-raising appeal on his behalf could be landing in mailboxes of her donors soon."

(So by donating to Hillary Clinton, you are helping pay off another politician's debt.)

The New York Times' Caucas Blog goes a step further:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton won’t know until the night of the Iowa caucuses whether the backing of Tom and Christie Vilsack, the state’s former governor and first lady, who formally announced today that they were endorsing her, will pay off. But Mr. Vilsack could reap benefits sooner.

Before ending his presidential bid on Feb. 23, Mr. Vilsack had accumulated a debt of about $430,000. The Clinton campaign has agreed to help erase at least some of that debt. A fund-raising appeal on his behalf could be landing in mailboxes of her donors soon.

Aides to Senator Clinton and Mr. Vilsack say there was no quid pro quo. Instead, they said, there is a personal connection. As a young lawyer, Mrs. Clinton served on the Watergate Committee with Mrs. Vilsack’s brother, Tom Bell.

“Senator Clinton has been close to the Vilsacks for years and if she can be helpful, she will,” said Phil Singer, a spokeswoman for the Clinton campaign.

Uh, yeah. Right. Let's see. The Watergate Committee was a long time ago and she served on it with his brother. But if they're that chummy, why did they have to reach back 30 something years to report the last connection they had?

If the Gov was really on the up-and-up, he'd have taken the debt help, then backed Senator Obama.

SF Mayor Gavin Newsom Shows New SF 49ers Stadium Plan Monday Night

It's good to see San Francisco continues to keep the pressure on. Frankly, I'd sue for economic tampering. The idea that the 49ers don't contribute to the city's economic health is just nuts.

City unveils new 49ers stadium proposal
Grand plans would aim to reinvigorate Hunters Point, Candlestick areas
Patrick Hoge, SF Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, March 26, 2007

(03-26) 22:01 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- The neglected areas of San Francisco's southeast shore would be remade into a destination spot with a new football stadium, hundreds of acres of open space and thousands of new homes under an ambitious city proposal that rivals plans for Treasure Island and Mission Bay.
Mayor Gavin Newsom says his plan for the 790-acre site would not require public funding for a stadium at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, a toxic site that the Navy is cleaning up. The plan also calls for a new look for Candlestick Point, where the 49ers' current stadium would be bulldozed to make way for high-rise homes, retail shops and parks.
The plan, unveiled Monday night, makes other far-reaching promises, such as plentiful parking for tailgate parties, no seizures of privately owned homes, possible rebuilding of a troubled housing project and, ultimately, the chance for city voters to bless the final vision.
"We have a plan that we can finance -- no surprises,'' Newsom said in an interview. "I want to put pressure on the 49ers. I want to make it very difficult for them to leave our city,'' Newsom said.
The team is working on a plan to build a stadium in Santa Clara and is trying to raise public support for partial public financing. A detailed financing plan for that project is expected next month.
But Newsom is betting that the 49ers will not get what they are seeking in the South Bay. He said he plans to ask the Board of Supervisors to endorse his plan in May, and environmental reviews could start in June. Construction could begin in June 2009, and the stadium could be ready by the 2012 season, he said.
City officials insist that the transformation of the troubled neighborhoods will happen regardless of whether the team builds its new home in San Francisco.
The city's plan embraces financing tactics that have worked in San Francisco before. Its partner is the Lennar Corp. of Miami, a Fortune 500 company that is leading redevelopment efforts at former military bases on Treasure Island and Mare Island in Vallejo.
As it did for the San Francisco Giants' waterfront ballpark, the city would contribute the land. Lennar says it would contribute $100 million in cash and help finance the stadium's infrastructure, including parking, roads, electrical lines, sewer pipes and water service.
The 49ers apparently don't have anything like that in Santa Clara, and the team says the city will have to make some sort of "up-front public investment,'' possibly in the form of land or access to the city's utility funds. One source involved with the deal said the team wants between $150 million and $200 million.
Team spokeswoman Lisa Lang said San Francisco's latest proposal represents progress but doesn't address all the team's concerns. That includes the cleanup of the Hunters Point Superfund site, designated as one of the country's most polluted areas.
"We are still in the midst of working through the issues associated with the cleanup time frame of the Superfund site, the public transportation plan, the infrastructure issues and the traffic plans, and these are not yet resolved,'' she said. "But we are making progress and working through these issues with the city and Lennar."
In November, 49ers owners John York and Denise DeBartolo York announced that Santa Clara had become their favored stadium site, abandoning a Candlestick proposal that city officials hoped could also support the 2016 Olympic Games. San Francisco's plan, the Yorks said, would feel cramped with the high-rise housing development, and a proposed multilevel parking garage would ruin the fans' tailgate traditions.
They also questioned whether Lennar Corp. would construct needed infrastructure improvements in a timely manner.
Newsom and Lennar's new plan provides open-air parking for 19,500 cars immediately around the stadium. The parking surface would be made of "dual use turf'' -- natural grass held together with a synthetic mesh in the root system, allowing the space to be used for recreation year-round.
The plan also includes at least 8,500 housing units, 2 million square feet of office space, an 8,000- to 12,000-seat arena and 700,000 square feet of retail and entertainment uses, including a large grocery store near Highway 101 at Candlestick and a smaller one at Hunters Point.
There would more than 350 acres of parks and open space, including the stadium parking and a waterfront trail.
Newsom said the plan would need the support of Bayview-Hunters Point residents, most of whom seemed pleased with the vision at a Monday evening meeting of citizens involved with the long-discussed redevelopment of both Hunters Point and Candlestick Point. To that end, Lennar's plans call for replacement housing for artists who have been living at the former shipyard.
There would also be an International African Marketplace, replacement housing for residents of the city's 45-year-old Alice Griffith Housing Development and even a cable-guided tram that would climb the steep hill that dominates Bayview Park, one of the city's least-used parks.
Lennar representatives said their project will be financed with private money, funds borrowed against future property taxes and assessments and fees typical of new development. They expect the project to be finished by 2021.
The 49ers are skeptical that the cleanup of the 500-acre former shipyard can be done expeditiously.
But Navy and Environmental Protection Agency officials say that much of the hardest work has already been done, and top Navy brass committed this month to trying to meet the city's schedule for a phased transfer of the shipyard, with the 27-acre parcel for the stadium conveyed first, by the summer of 2009, to allow for stadium construction.
The key issue is whether Congress will maintain the same level of annual funding for the cleanup of Hunters Point -- about $70 million. The answer to that question will not come until this fall, but the city has U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on its side.
The 49ers also have questioned whether fans will get to and from a Hunters Point stadium quickly. Santa Clara boasts that it has four- to eight-lane roads serving the potential stadium site, between Great America amusement park and the city's convention center near the nexus of highways 101 and 237 and Interstate 880.
Lennar's traffic engineers believe the "dump time'' for getting cars out of a Hunters Point site would be less than what fans currently experience at Monster Park and would be comparable to what fans would experience in Santa Clara. They reason that traffic would travel on several routes. Northbound traffic, for example, would go through industrial neighborhoods. The company has not provided any traffic studies. The city's plan also calls for mass transit, including buses and possibly water taxis or ferries.
The 49ers have not made a formal proposal to Santa Clara yet. Last week, however, 49ers officials were openly coordinating with former Santa Clara city staff members and elected officials who publicly called on the city to study using some of city-owned Silicon Valley Power's money for a stadium project.
One advocate for studying that approach was former city manager and councilman Don Von Raesfeld, for whom the city recently named its new power plant. Team officials told him they need a public investment of somewhere between $150 million and $200 million, he said.
John Roukema, assistant director of Silicon Valley Power, said that drawing down the utility's reserve funds could lead to an increase in electricity rates, which are among the lowest in the state.
Roukema said that as of January, the utility's cash and investments totaled $387 million. And of that, nearly $169 million is committed to specific projects or needed to pay down bonds. The remaining $241 million, he said, is needed for capital improvements and insurance against electricity market volatility.
"The fact is that this money is still used to allow us to provide competitively priced electricity,'' Roukema said. "It's certainly not a windfall here.''
Von Raesfeld said he did not think a citywide vote would be required if the city chose to invest utility funds directly into the stadium.
Santa Clara's city attorney in 2001, however, opined that voters would have to change the city charter to tap utility funds to help fund a baseball stadium for the Oakland Athletics. That effort, led by local citizens including Von Raesfeld, withered away without a vote after years of work.
In 1990, the San Francisco Giants also went to voters in Santa Clara, San Jose, Sunnyvale and Milpitas seeking approval of a 1 percent electricity tax to pay for a stadium. The measure was soundly rejected.
E-mail Patrick Hoge at phoge@sfchronicle.com.

NFL Draft Preview Video - One | Chris Leak, Ted Ginn Jr., Michael Bush, Kenny Irons

I called this NFL Draft Video - One, because there will be more videos before all is said and done.

The author reports that it features MICHAEL BUSH,CHRIS LEAK, DWAYNE JARRETT, TED GINN JR., KENNY IRONS.

Chris Rock On Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton - Video

This is the funniest Chris Rock performance I've ever seen. The video speaks for itself. Chris Rock says that Barack Obama will be the next President of The United States.

Apply Iraq War Expenses To Heath Care Here

I'm watching the "New Leadership Health Care 2008 Presidential Forum" in Las Vegas. Senator Obama just made his presentation and did very well. Now Senator Clinton is speaking and it's obvious that this is where her heart is. But the matter of how we should pay for a new health care system has not been adressed in a way that avoids taxes or at least is less likely to cause an increase in taxes.

I have a suggestion for Senator Obama, because he opposes the War In Iraq. Because Senator Clinton does support the war, this idea does not apply to her.

Currenly, the War On Iraq costs $411 billion. That's a half trillion dollars and the cost is going up each second. According to the National Priorities Project, we could have insured 246 million kids for one year. Now, get this, we don't have that many kids in America. So one could argue that we could insure kids for up to three years!

The Senator needs to make this link between what we need to pay for heath care and what we spend on the War on Iraq.

Jets Look to sign Back Up QB Tuiasosopo

Backup QB Tuiasosopo in wings for Jets
BY TOM ROCK

The Jets announced the signing of free-agent defensive end Michael Haynes yesterday and soon could do the same for quarterback Marques Tuiasosopo. An NFL source said the Jets will finalize a deal with the former Raider and six-year veteran, possibly early next week. The 28-year-old unrestricted free agent reportedly has reached an agreement in principle with the team.

Tuiasosopo, who will compete with Kellen Clemens for the backup quarterback job, appeared in only 11 games, including two starts, in six seasons.

Tuiasosopo's deal is likely to be a one-year contract with a base salary of $595,000, the league minimum for a player with his tenure. That would allow him to become an unrestricted free agent again at the end of the 2007 season.
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What? did i see the word "Compete"?? what competition?? That was last Summer. There will be no competition This Jets camp!
As good a college career that Marques had(incidently-both Clemens and Tuiasosopo are products of the great northwest)
Clemens runs rings around him in Qb skills. What we see here is that no longer does Chad Pennington need a Veteran Back- up. He is the Veteran QB, and the Youngsters are waiting on his decline. Mangini and Tannenbaum are smart enough to know that Chad's shoulder will not last forever.

Veronica Stars In Wackiest Video I've Ever Seen

This is simply the wackiest video I've ever seen. "Veronica" is bored. She's home for Spring Break with nothing to do. So she creates her own fun using her camcorder. The clip is set to some pretty jumpin' 70s disco dance music that's right for the occasion. I got a kick out of it.

Here it is:

Spring Break - Still A Rite Of Passage But Now For Women

During my college years Spring Break, which deserves its caps, was considered a rite of passage for men. But today, Spring Break is still that, and now a rite of passage for women.

Take a look at this video which features "the drunken antics" of a couple of young women. They pound shots, kiss each other (something mainstream guys didn't do), and eventually get on or something with some guys. The music's pure hip hop for the most part, and well-used. This is a must see video for anyone interested in American Culture.

Texans Name Schaub Starting QB

Texans introduce Schaub as starting quarterback-See my comment

By CHRIS DUNCAN, AP Sports Writer
March 22, 2007

HOUSTON (AP) -- David Carr is done as the starting quarterback of the Houston Texans.

The Texans acquired Matt Schaub in a trade with Atlanta on Thursday and said for the first time publicly that Carr's five-year tenure as the starter is over.

"Matt is our starting quarterback," general manager Rick Smith said. "We're trying to help David find another place. We're trying to trade him today, maybe the next couple of days."

The Schaub Era begins with the same cloud that lingered over Carr's final season: Vince Young. The Texans could've drafted the hometown star who led the Texas Longhorns to a national championship, but opted to stick with Carr in hopes he'd finally live up to his status as the first pick in franchise history.

Houston showed its faith in Carr by giving him a contract extension last offseason.

"Yes, we've made mistakes," team owner Bob McNair said. "Not just there, that's not the only place. And we'll make mistakes moving forward. The key is you've got to make more good decisions than bad decisions."

Carr became the face of this expansion team from the time he was taken No. 1 overall in 2002. He won his opener, but the Texans have gone 24-56 over five years, never posting a winning record.

Houston went 6-10 last season and Young added to the sting by carrying the Tennessee Titans to wins in eight of their last 11 games, including a dramatic overtime victory in Houston.

Now, Schaub gets a chance to make Texans fans forget about Young.

Schaub's agent, Joby Branion, said Schaub signed a six-year deal worth $48 million.

Schaub hasn't started a game since 2005 and threw only 27 passes last season. McNair said Schaub brings "the leadership that we think is needed."

Schaub acknowledged that he'll have to overcome his lack of experience.

"There are going to be a lot more things as the starter that you have to do and handle on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to being the backup," Schaub said. "It's just a matter of knowing that going in and meeting it head on."

Schaub, who was a restricted free agent, could have signed with any team, but was sold on the Texans during a round of golf he played with Kubiak on Monday.

"The thing he told me was he was going to do what it takes to be successful, as an offensive team, especially," Schaub said. "It's just an incredible opportunity for me to take the next step in my career, leading a team and running the huddle."

The Texans and Falcons also swapped first-round picks in the upcoming draft -- Atlanta now has the eighth pick and Houston dropped to No. 10. Atlanta also received second-round picks in the next two drafts.

Schaub entered the league through the same draft as Eli Manning, Phillip Rivers and J.P. Losman. Kubiak said the Texans grabbed Schaub just as he's starting to blossom.

"We wanted a player who's ready to go into his prime and that's what this young man is," Kubiak said. "This guy is ready for his opportunity to run a football team. We're catching him at the perfect time. We could walk across that field today and he could take us out of the huddle."

Before landing Schaub, Houston tried to sign Jeff Garcia and Patrick Ramsey before the two joined other teams. The Texans also reportedly were pursuing Jake Plummer, who retired.

The Falcons took Schaub in the third round of the 2004 draft. The 6-foot-5 Schaub set school records at Virginia for pass completions (716), passing yards (7,502) and touchdown throws (56).

"This player is what an NFL quarterback should be," Smith said. "He's a leader. He's a strong, smart accurate passer. As we looked at the market and assessed how to get better at the position, we entertained a lot of ideas.

"At the end of the day, the acquisition we've made today is perfect for us."

Carr had similarly glowing numbers at Fresno State when the Texans chose him with the first pick in 2002. He completed 60 percent of his passes with Houston, but also threw 65 interceptions and was sacked 249 times in five seasons.

Houston also has quarterbacks Sage Rosenfels, Bradlee Van Pelt and Quinton Porter on its roster.

Carr has two years left on his contract that will pay him about $11.5 million over the next two seasons.

"We're hopeful he will continue his NFL career and be successful," Smith said.

A message was left seeking comment from Mike Sullivan, Carr's agent.
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So this is where it ends for Carr in Texas. He wants to go west, maybe to Denver to back up Jay Cutler, or maybe to Oakland, where the QB spot is wide open no matter who gets drafted. He has to decide weather he thinks he's still "Starting" QB Quality or not.