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TRIPLE CROWN: Obama Now Takes The Lead in Superdelegates Too
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/09 at 08:59 AM
ABCnews.com
May 09, 2008 6:19 AM
OBAMA TAKES THE TRIPLE CROWN: PLEDGES DELEGATES, POPULAR VOTES, AND SUPERDELEGES. ALSO LEADS IN STATES WON AND MONEY RAISED
ABC News’ Karen Travers Reports: For the first time this campaign season, Barack Obama has surpassed Hillary Clinton’s support among superdelegates, according to the ABC News delegate estimate.
Sen. Obama, D-Ill., picked up two superdelegates this morning giving him a new metric to tout in addition to his current commanding leads in pledged delegates, popular votes, states won, and money raised.
Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., switched his endorsement from Clinton to Obama and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., endorsed Obama. DeFazio was previously uncommitted.
With these endorsements, Obama has the support of 267 superdelegates and Clinton has 265 superdelegates.
Every news organization’s superdelegate count is a little different because it is an imperfect science. Since October 2007, the Political Unit has continuously reached out to the nearly 800 superdelegates to determine their candidate preference. We also reach out regularly to the Obama and Clinton campaigns for their superdelegate lists and work to confirm any that they include on their lists.
Clinton’s advantage among superdelegates was once massive and has been dwindling steadily since Super Tuesday, when she was ahead by over 60 superdelegates
CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
May 8, 2008 – 1:29 p.m.
By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday rejected a compromise plan to seat Michigan’s delegates to the national convention that would give 69 delegates to Clinton and 59 to Barack Obama .
“This proposal does not honor the 600,000 votes that were cast in Michigan’s January primary. Those votes must be counted,” Clinton spokesman Isaac Baker said.
The Michigan Democratic Party had approved the plan and intended to submit it to the Democratic National Committee meeting on May 31. Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer said in a statement that the plan was a “good step toward a solution that unites Democrats and ensures that our state will not face a McCain presidency.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) had stripped Michigan of its delegation to the Democratic National Convention because the state party scheduled its Jan. 15 primary in violation of national party rules. Several plans have been proposed to find a way to seat Michigan’s delegation.
Mich. Dems settle on delegate-seating plan to bring to DNC
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/09 at 08:38 AM
Huffingtonpost.com, Kathy Barks Hoffman, May 7, 2008
LANSING, Mich. — Michigan Democratic leaders on Wednesday settled on a plan to give presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton 69 delegates and Barack Obama 59 as a way to get the state’s delegates seated at the national convention.
Clinton “won” the Jan. 15 Michigan primary and was to get 73 pledged delegates under state party rules, while Obama was to get 55. The state also has 29 superdelegates.
The state party’s executive committee voted Wednesday to ask the national party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee to approve the 69-59 delegate split when it meets May 31. The plan would allow the state’s 157 delegates and superdelegates to be seated at the convention.
Time.com. by Karen Tumulty
Thursday, May. 08, 2008
For all her talk about “full speed on to the White House,” there was an unmistakably elegiac tone to Hillary Clinton’s primary-night speech in Indianapolis. And if one needed further confirmation that the undaunted, never-say-die Clintons realize their bid might be at an end, all it took was a look at the wistful faces of the husband and the daughter who stood behind the candidate as she talked of all the people she has met in a journey “that has been a blessing for me.”
It was also a journey she had begun with what appeared to be insurmountable advantages, which evaporated one by one as the campaign dragged on far longer than anyone could have anticipated. She made at least five big mistakes, each of which compounded the others:
1. She misjudged the mood
That was probably her biggest blunder. In a cycle that has been all about change, Clinton chose an incumbent’s strategy, running on experience, preparedness, inevitability — and the power of the strongest brand name in Democratic politics. It made sense, given who she is and the additional doubts that some voters might have about making a woman Commander in Chief. But in putting her focus on positioning herself to win the general election in November, Clinton completely misread the mood of Democratic-primary voters, who were desperate to turn the page. “Being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change,” says Barack Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod. Clinton’s “initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands.” But other miscalculations made it worse:
An interview Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-IL) gave to USA TODAY Wednesday is fanning new flames of racial tension between her and Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) presidential campaign.
“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she said in an interview published Thursday. She cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”
“There’s a pattern emerging here,” she said.
“Clinton’s blunt remarks about race came a day after primaries in Indiana and North Carolina dealt symbolic and mathematical blows to her White House ambitions. The Obama campaign, looking toward locking up the nomination, stepped up pressure on superdelegates who have the decisive votes in their race,” USA Today remarked.
Feinstein to ask Clinton for her primary game plan
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/09 at 08:28 AM
TheHill.com, By Manu Raju, 05/07/08
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), one of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) most prominent Senate supporters, said Wednesday that she will ask the former first lady to detail her plans for the rest of the Democratic primary.
“I, as you know, have great fondness and great respect for Sen. Clinton and I’m very loyal to her,” Feinstein said. “Having said that, I’d like to talk with her and [get] her view on the rest of the race and what the strategy is.”
Clinton, who eked out a win in Indiana Tuesday night but lost big to front-runner Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in North Carolina, has not responded to Feinstein’s phone call, the California senator said.
“I think the race is reaching the point now where there are negative dividends from it, in terms of strife within the party,” Feinstein said. “I think we need to prevent that as much as we can.”
Tuesday night’s results are widely viewed as a blow to Clinton’s hopes after she failed to deliver a “game-changing” performance. Instead, Obama extended his leads among delegates and popular votes.
Easy to understand: What happened with Florida and Michigan
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/07 at 08:12 PM
Wikipedia: Nullified primaries
In August 2006, the Democratic National Committee adopted a proposal by its Rules and Bylaws Committee stating that only the four states of Iowa (caucus #1), New Hampshire (primary #1), Nevada (caucus #2), and South Carolina (primary #2) would be permitted to hold primaries or caucuses before February 5, 2008.[38]
In May 2007, the Florida Legislature passed a bill that moved the date of the state’s primary to January 29, 2008, setting up a confrontation with the DNC.[39] In response, the DNC ruled that Florida’s 185 pledged delegates and 26 superdelegates would not be seated at the Democratic National Convention, or, if seated, would not be able to vote.[40]
In the coming hours – or days or weeks? – the Democratic Party’s superdelegates will receive a flood of information about The State of The Presidential Race. Today’s first memorandum comes from David Plouffe, campaign manager for Senator Barack Obama.
In the overnight dispatch, Mr. Plouffe lays out the argument – rooted in math and politics – for how he believes the door is closing on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chance to capture the Democratic nomination.
In the six remaining contests, Mr. Obama needs 172 delegates to become the party’s nominee – 36 percent of the total remaining delegates. By his count, Mrs. Clinton needs 326 delegates to become the nominee – 68 percent of the remaining delegates.
“With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days,” Mr. Plouffe writes. “While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.”
As of now, Mr. Obama plans to spend the day in Chicago with his family, before traveling to Washington tonight. On tap? Meetings with superdelegates and party leaders.
This is the argument that Mr. Obama – and his army of supporters – will lay out:
TO: Superdelegates
FROM: David Plouffe, Campaign Manager
RE: An Update on the Race for Delegates
DA: May 7, 2008
There are only six contests remaining in the Democratic primary calendar and only 217 pledged delegates left to be awarded. Only 7 percent of the pledged delegates remain on the table. There are 260 remaining undeclared superdelegates, for a total of 477 delegates left to be awarded.
With North Carolina and Indiana complete, Barack Obama only needs 172 total delegates to capture the Democratic nomination. This is only 36 percent of the total remaining delegates.
Conversely, Senator Clinton needs 326 delegates to reach the Democratic nomination, which represents a startling 68 percent of the remaining delegates.
With the Clinton path to the nomination getting even narrower, we expect new and wildly creative scenarios to emerge in the coming days. While those scenarios may be entertaining, they are not legitimate and will not be considered legitimate by this campaign or its millions of supporters, volunteers, and donors.
We believe it is exceedingly unlikely Senator Clinton will overtake our lead in the popular vote and in fact lost ground on that measure last night. However, the popular vote is a deeply flawed and illegitimate metric for deciding the nominee – since each campaign based their strategy on the acquisition of delegates. More importantly, the rules of the nomination are predicated on delegates, not popular vote.
Just as the Presidential election in November will be decided by the electoral college, not popular vote, the Democratic nomination is decided by delegates.
If we believed the popular vote was somehow the key measurement, we would have campaigned much more intensively in our home state of Illinois and in all the other populous states, in the pursuit of larger raw vote totals. But it is not the key measurement.
May 6: After a victory in North Carolina, Sen. Barack Obama tells supporters that “Americans are looking for honest answers about the challenges they face.”
RALEIGH, N.C. - Barack Obama called his North Carolina primary win on Tuesday a victory against the “politics of division and the politics of distraction.”
The Illinois senator claimed a strong victory in the Southern state to steady a campaign rocked by missteps and a hard-charging rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Obama told North Carolina supporters in Raleigh that he was able to overcome negative politicking that is all about scoring points and not about solving problems. He said Americans “aren’t looking for more spin; they’re looking for honest answers.”
With his wife Michelle looking on, Obama savored his victory in North Carolina and called attention to claims by the Clinton campaign that the North Carolina race would be a “game-changer.”
“But today, what North Carolina decided is that the only game that needs changing is the one in Washington, DC.,” said the first-term Illinois senator.
Exit polls show signs that Limbaugh’s minions turned out for Clinton
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/06 at 09:23 PM
Rawstory.com, by Nick Juliano, May 6, 2008
Rush Limbaugh would like little more than to see Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama keep fighting each other for at least the next month, if not until the Democratic Convention itself.
Before the Texas and Ohio primaries in early March, the conservative talker began encouraging listeners to cross over and cast ballots for Clinton in Democratic primaries. At the very least, he figured, the Democrats would keep fighting each other and let GOP nominee John McCain float above the fray. In perhaps his most optimistic scenario, Clinton would grab the nomination, giving the right another crack at one of their favorite foes in a general election campaign.
Limbaugh dubbed his scheme “Operation Chaos,” and plenty of signs were emerging Tuesday evening that it was working, especially in Indiana, where Clinton appeared headed for a slim victory. Exit polls conducted by the major news networks showed an unusually high number of Clinton supporters planned to vote for McCain in the fall and felt the former first lady did not share their values.
ABCnews.com, By RICK KLEIN with MIKE ELMORE
May 7, 2008
The question that is now astoundingly close to being the most urgent one in the presidential race: Does Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton see a distinction between the good of the Clintons, the good of the Democratic Party, and the good of the country?
On the night that Clinton needed a resounding victory, it was Sen. Barack Obama who emerged on top—and, by bouncing back from the biggest challenge to his candidacy, went a long way toward answering the questions that had left him battered and bruised (not even counting what happened on the basketball court).
Clinton, D-N.Y., lost precious ground in delegates, votes, and momentum—with margins that all-but wiped out her pick-ups from Pennsylvania two weeks ago. They both won a state, but Obama’s was bigger, and was called far earlier; under the Wright-infused circumstances (and given the Clinton Campaign’s intense late efforts) his margin in North Carolina was jaw-dropping, while hers in Indiana was jaw-clenching.
Obama, D-Ill., now needs only about 37 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination, per ABC’s political unit—and he holds a 164-delegate edge before the superdelegate movement we can almost certainly expect the day after his biggest campaign night in months.
“This nomination fight is over,” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos said on “Good Morning America” Wednesday. “More superdelegates will come out today for Barack Obama --they will come three, four, five at a time, and this nomination will be locked up. . . . People close to her say that she’s more likely to stay in if she feels cornered in by the party leaders.”
Analysis: Clinton fails to get needed game-changer
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/06 at 09:23 PM
AP, By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Writer
05/07/08
WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton needed a game changer. Instead, it’s almost game over.
Barack Obama won a resounding victory in North Carolina after the worst two-week stretch in his campaign. And Clinton, fueled by a burst of energy from her convincing win in Pennsylvania last month, barely eked out a win in Indiana despite her full-throated populist appeal in that largely blue-collar state.
There are six primaries left in the Democrats’ epic battle for the nomination, but Tuesday’s results were decisive on their own: They offered Clinton her last, best chance to turn the tables on her rival, and she didn’t even come close.
“It’s bad news for Hillary Clinton, but frankly I think the game changed a long time ago,” said unaligned Democratic strategist Garry South. “Barack Obama has outraised her substantially, he’s won more states, more pledged delegates, and is ahead in the popular vote. It’s obvious he’s outperformed her.”
Indeed, Obama managed to outpace Clinton through a period that tested his mettle and political skills more than any other in the 15-month campaign. In a stretch that pitted Clinton’s gritty determination against Obama’s calm fortitude, the Illinois senator prevailed.
Rush Limbaugh: ‘Operation Chaos’ A Success In Extending Nomination
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/06 at 08:17 PM
The Huffington Post, May 6, 2008
Did Rush Limbaugh disrupt the primaries today? He certainly thinks so; discover Operation Chaos:
RUSH LIMBAUGH: Greetings my friends. Greetings special operatives and commandos. I am commander-in-chief, US Operation Chaos. Rush Limbaugh, [inaudible] broadcast excellence for the next three hours. From behind the Golden EIB microphone at the heavily fortified and bunkered EIB Southern Command in Palm Beach, Florida.
I just got an email right before the email started. It said, “Rush, you are the lead at TIME Magazine.com. This is madness.” So I went there, and it’s Mark Halperin’s blog, and there is a picture of me in a blue background with all kinds of stars surrounding my beautiful face and head. And the headline above this graphic is “Chaos?!” with an exclamation point and a question mark, and it references this story that I’m holding here in my formerly nicotine-stained fingers. The Indianapolis Star today on its website is updating turnout and other aspects of the primary vote in Indiana today. And the headline of their 10:51 am report was “Hardcore Republicans voting Democrat.” And the TIME Magazine blog says, “Listen to Limbaugh Crow About This at Noon Eastern.” I think they have a link to my website.
House committee votes to compel Cheney’s chief of staff to testify about torture
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/06 at 02:25 PM
Rawstory.com, John Byrne, May 6, 2008
By a voice vote, the House Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday morning to compel Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington to testify about his role in approving harsh interrogation tactics at the US Guantanamo Bay prison.
The vote empowers House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) to subpoena Addington at his discretion.
“This subpoena should not be controversial – as an institutional matter, all members should support our effort to learn the facts and to exercise responsible oversight in this area,” Conyers said in a written statement Tuesday.
The White House does not have archival copies of e-mails exchanged between administration officials during the weeks leading up to President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq nor for the first two months of the war there, according to a just-released filing concerning millions of e-mails alleged to have gone missing or been deleted.
“A White House declaration filed late last night ... makes the stunning admission that the White House failed to preserve ANY backup tapes for the period March 1, 2003 through May 22, 2003, a period of time during which the U.S. went to war in Iraq,” says a release from Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, a watchdog group suing for public records concerning the disappearance of internal White House e-mails.
LAGOS (Reuters) - Rebels who have stepped up attacks on Nigeria’s oil industry in the last month said on Sunday they were considering a ceasefire appeal by U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) has launched five attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta since it resumed a campaign of violence in April, forcing Royal Dutch Shell to shut more than 164,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd).
“The MEND command is seriously considering a temporary ceasefire appeal by Senator Barack Obama. Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem,” the militant group said in an e-mailed statement.
MEND did not say when or where Obama, the leading candidate for the Democratic ticket for November’s U.S. presidential election, made the appeal. It said it hoped the government would use any ceasefire to improve conditions for its detained leader, Henry Okah.
NBC.com
Posted: Monday, May 05, 2008, Domenico Montanaro
From NBC’s Robert Windrem
Hillary Clinton has pledged to “obliterate” Iran if it strikes Israel with nuclear weapons (it doesn’t yet have). Iran has protested the Democratic presidential candidate’s fiery rhetoric as a violation of the UN Charter and asked for Security Council action. Sen. Barack Obama has condemned Senator Clinton’s statement.
All the sturm and drang misses one critical point.
Israel does not need the US to counter attack. Israel has the world’s sixth largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, behind only the US, Russia, China, the UK and (maybe) France. It can handle ANY Iranian threat on its own, thank you very much.
The U.S. estimates Israel has about 200 nuclear weapons made up of five different classes of weapons. Israel assembled its first two bombs on the night of Nov. 2, 1966. In the Six-Day War, it had two weapons on alert; by the Yom Kippur War in 1973, 20 were on alert; by the Gulf War, the number had reached more than 200.
There are thermonuclear missile warheads on missiles with intercontinental (Jericho II) and intermediate (Jericho I) range, nuclear landmines, artillery shells and neutron bombs to stop assaults across their vulnerable borders, aerial bombs attached to American-made F-15’s dispersed and on alert. It has a nuclear target base of nearly 100 targets, which, like the US base, is continually updated and which, like the US, can be updated in near real time. And it has an entire wing of its Air Force, the secret 2nd Wing, to manage it all.
Former UN weapons inspector says attack on Iran ‘virtual guarantee’
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/05 at 08:13 AM
Rawstory.com, 05/05/2008, by John Byrne
US denies again on Monday
Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who was among the original experts to question Bush Administration claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, now says he believes an attack on Iran is a “virtual guarantee.”
“We take a look at the military buildup, we take a look at the rhetoric, we take a look at the diplomatic posturing, and I would say that it’s a virtual guarantee that there will be a limited aerial strike against Iran in the not-so-near future—or not-so-distant future, that focuses on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command,” Ritter said last week in a little-noted interview with Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now. “And if this situation spins further out of control, you would see these aerial strikes expanding to include Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and some significant command and control targets.”
John McCain Should Denounce Hagee Endorsement, Anti-Catholic Remarks
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/04 at 10:58 PM
Democratic National Committee
February 29, 2008
In his struggle to shore up his base, John McCain has once again cast aside his principles by embracing Rev. John Hagee, saying he was “pleased to have the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee,” despite his intolerant comments about Catholics, women, African Americans, Muslims and LGBT Americans. He repeated his support today, saying “I am very proud of the Pastor John Hagee’s spiritual leadership to thousands of people…I am not endorsing some of their positions.” [McCain Media Availability, 2/29/08]
So which Hagee positions does John McCain endorse? His position that Hurricane Katrina was punishment from God because “New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.” Or his position that “all Muslims have a mandate to kill Christians and Jews.” [NPR Fresh Air, 9/18/06] Or his “slave sale” where he announced that participants should “make plans to come and go home with a slave.” [San Antonio Express-News 3/7/96]
Some hateful, radical ministers—white evangelicals—are acceptable
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/04 at 10:33 PM
Glenn Greenwald
Thursday Feb. 28, 2008 07:40 EST
One of this week’s hysterical press scandals was that Minister Louis Farrakhan praised Barack Obama’s candidacy even though Obama had previously denounced numerous Farrakhan remarks and the Obama campaign did nothing to seek out the Farrakhan praise. Nonetheless, Tim Russert demanded that Obama jump through multiple hoops to prove that he has no connection to—and, in fact, “rejects”—the ideas espoused by Farrakhan deemed to be radical and hateful.
Yesterday, though, the equally fringe, radical and hateful (at least) Rev. John Hagee—a white evangelical who is the pastor of a sprawling “mega-church” in Texas -- enthusiastically endorsed John McCain. Did McCain have to jump through the same hoops which Russert and others set up for Obama and “denounce” Hagee’s extremism and “reject” his support? No; quite the opposite. McCain said he was “very honored” to receive this endorsement and, when asked about some of Hagee’s more twisted views, responded: “all I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee’s support.”
McCain’s sainted supporter, Joe Lieberman, last year spoke to Hagee’s group and lavished him with such obsequious praise that Lieberman actually compared Hagee, favorably, to Moses.Why is Louis Farrakhan deemed by our political establishment to be so radioactive as to not be fit for good company—black candidates are required to repudiate his support even when they haven’t sought it and denounce his views even when they’ve never advocated anything close to those views—but John Hagee is a perfectly acceptable figure whom mainstream GOP politicians are free to court without any consequences or media objections?
As rhetoric over foreign policy, electability and a gas tax holiday intensifies less than 48 hours before yet another defining moment in the epic 2008 election, the Democratic presidential contenders stepped off the trail today in Indiana for separate news show interviews on dueling television networks.
On ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., was asked repeatedly to name an economist who supports her plan to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax. She either could not or chose not to.
“I’m not going to put my lot in with economists,” she said, presenting her tax hike plan as a way to lift the burden of soaring gas prices off middle class Americans.
Rival Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has called the plan, which is also backed by Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting, Sen. John McCain , “a pander” that won’t solve the high cost of gas.
UTICA, New York - Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois holds a nine point lead in North Carolina, and has now edged ahead of Hillary Clinton of New York by a statistically insignificant two points in Indiana, a pair of new Zogby daily tracking telephone polls show.
In both states, the candidates are essentially tied among moderate voters, while Obama holds leads among mainline liberals and progressives. Clinton holds substantial advantages among conservative voters likely to cast ballots in the Democratic primary election.
After a good day of polling, Obama retains a lead in North Carolina - 48% to 39%, with 13% either unsure or favoring someone else. In Indiana, Obama won the day by a small margin and now holds 43% support, compared to 41% for Clinton, with the balance either favoring someone else or undecided.
(CBS) Democrat Barack Obama appears to have rebounded from some of the damage caused by the controversy surrounding his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to the latest CBS News/New York Times poll.
On one key measure, Obama has seen a big reversal since his denunciation of Wright’s remarks on Tuesday. He now leads presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in the hypothetical fall contest by eleven points, 51 percent to 40 percent. That compares to a tied match-up in a CBS News/New York Times poll that was released last Wednesday.
Positive assessments of how Obama has handled the situation with Wright are also reflected by a continued lead over fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton in his battle for their party’s nomination. Among Democratic primary voters (those who have voted or plan to vote in a Democratic primary) Obama’s lead over Clinton has increased—he now leads Clinton by twelve points, 50 percent to 38 percent. That’s up from his eight point lead in the poll released just a few days ago.
Pentagon said drawing up plans for strike on Iranian camp
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/04 at 09:43 PM
Pentagon said drawing up plans for strike on Iranian camp
John Byrne. Rawstory.com, Saturday May 3, 2008
Military focus shifts from nuclear facilities to Revolutionary Guard
The Pentagon is drawing up plans for a “surgical strike” against an alleged insurgent training camp in Iran, according to the UK Sunday Times’ Michael Smith.
Attributing the assertion to Western intelligence officials, Smith asserts that US officials have become increasingly frustrated with Iran’s Republican Guard force—an elite corps of the country’s military—which the Bush Administration has designated a terrorist group. Western officials have accused Iran of helping arming rebel militias in Iraq, and have accused Iran of supplying IEDs.
Smith was the first to reveal the Downing Street Minutes, an account of a secret 2002 meeting between Bush Administration officials and British intelligence surrounding Iraq, in which MI6 director Richard Dearlove remarked that facts around Iraq were being “fixed” around a policy for war.
Clinton strategists weigh ‘nuclear option’ to take out Obama at convention
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/04 at 09:38 PM
RawStory.comSunday May 4, 2008
Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign claims to have a secret weapon up their sleeve.
According to a report Sunday, Clinton’s campaign could force the Democratic National Committee to seat Florida and Michigan, thereby potentially giving her the votes she needs to secure the Democratic nomination.
The climate, however, doesn’t appear to be ripe. Campaign strategists tell Thomas Edsall of the Huffington Post that “any attempt to deploy it would require a sharp (and by no means inevitable) shift in the political climate within Democratic circles by the end of this month.”
This “nuclear option”—the same term applied to a Republican effort in the Senate to destroy the chamber’s filibuster—would likely cause chaos among the party, particularly among activists.
McCain implies U.S. invaded Iraq for oil … Mission NeverEnding
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/04 at 12:08 AM
During a townhall event in Denver today, John McCain made this eye-opening observation:
My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.
The comments echo the words of former Fed Chief Alan Greenspan, who wrote that he is “saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Watch it:
May 3, 2008. Op-Ed Columnist, New York Times
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Since January, the Clintons have pummeled Barack Obama with racially tinged comments and questions about his character.
Hillary Clinton has questioned why he didn’t walk out on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.; why he “denounced” but didn’t “reject” Louis Farrakhan; and whether he is too chummy with the former radical Bill Ayers. She chastised his characterization of white working-class voters as being highfalutin and chided him for not agreeing to a street-fight-style debate.
Bill Clinton has called Obama’s stance on the war a fairy tale, dismissed an early primary win as mere Jesse Jackson redux and recently claimed that Obama was playing the race card against him. Some of this is valid, the result of Obama’s own missteps, but some of it is baffling.
DNC Chairman Under Bill Clinton: Unite Behind Obama
Posted by admincathlyn on 05/01 at 09:14 PM
AP, May 1, 2008
NEDRA PICKLER
WASHINGTON — A leader of the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton switched his allegiance to Barack Obama on Thursday and urged fellow Democrats to end the bruising nomination fight.
“This has got to come to an end,” former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew told reporters in his hometown of Indianapolis just days before Tuesday’s crucial state primary. He said he planned to call all the other superdelegates he knows and encourage them to back Obama.
Bill Clinton appointed Andrew chairman of the DNC in 1999, and he led the party through the disputed 2000 presidential race before stepping down in 2001. Andrew endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton last year on the day she declared her candidacy for the White House.
In a lengthy letter explaining his decision, Andrew said he is switching his support because “a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue this process, and a vote to continue this process is a vote that assists (Republican) John McCain.”
“The ship is taking on water right now,” Andrew said at the news conference. “We need to patch those holes, heal the rift and go forward to beat John McCain.”
Party Fears Racial Divide; Attacks Could Do Lasting Harm, Democrats Say
Posted by admincathlyn on 04/26 at 01:48 PM
By Jonathan Weisman and Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 26, 2008; A01
The protracted and increasingly acrimonious fight for the Democratic presidential nomination is unnerving core constituencies—African Americans and wealthy liberals—who are becoming convinced that the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama.
Clinton’s solid win in the Pennsylvania primary exposed a quandary for the party. Her backers may be convinced that only she can win the white, working-class voters that the Democratic nominee will need in the general election, but many African American leaders say a Clinton nomination—handed to her by superdelegates—would result in a disastrous breach with black voters.
“If this party is perceived by people as having gone into a back room somewhere and brokered a nominee, that would not be good for our party,” House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.), the highest ranking African American in Congress, warned yesterday. “I’m telling you, if this continues on its current course, [the damage] is going to be irreparable.”
That fear, plus a more general sense that Clinton’s only route to victory would be through tearing down her opponent, has led even some black Democrats who are officially neutral in the race, such as Clyburn, to speak out.
Clinton’s camp has a vastly different interpretation, arguing that the most recent primary demonstrated that Democrats remain very interested in seeing the contest continue.
“Pennsylvania did the job of calming any nerves that existed,” said Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson. “It showed that the big states around the country think she’s the best person to be president.”
But that opinion is far from unanimous. More than 70 top Clinton donors wrote their first checks to Obama in March, campaign records show. Clinton’s lead among superdelegates, a collection of almost 800 party leaders and elected officials, has slipped from 106 in December to 23 now, according to an Associated Press tally.
”If you have any, any kind of loyalty to the Democratic Party, perhaps you need to rethink your strategy and bow out gracefully in order to save this party from a disastrous end in November,” Rep. William Lacy Clay (Mo.), an African American Obama supporter, said in an appeal to Clinton.
John Edwards’s supporters are flocking to Sen. Obama
Posted by admincathlyn on 04/25 at 02:22 PM
By Alexander Bolton
04/24/08
Donors, activists and members of Congress who backed former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) are flocking to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).
This and the fact that Obama is likely to win the North Carolina primary could prompt Edwards to endorse Obama — a move that could burnish the front-runner’s credentials with blue-collar, white voters, who are part of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) base.
Since Edwards dropped out of the presidential race, Obama’s campaign has received contributions of $200 or more from 1,089 donors who had supported Edwards, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records.
Only 393 Edwards donors have given to Clinton since the primary became a two-candidate race. Since Edwards withdrew on Jan. 30, Obama has raised nearly $1 million from Edwards donors, compared to the $427,000 that has flowed to Clinton.
The strong bias among Edwards’s supporters prompts Obama’s allies to hope for an endorsement by the former candidate that could help him in big states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, that were won by Clinton.
ConsortiumNews.com, By Robert Parry, April 21, 2008
After prying loose 8,000 pages of Pentagon documents, the New York Times has proven what should have been obvious years ago: the Bush administration manipulated public opinion on the Iraq War, in part, by funneling propaganda through former senior military officers who served as expert analysts on TV news shows.
In 2002-03, these military analysts were ubiquitous on TV justifying the Iraq invasion, and most have remained supportive of the war in the five years since. The Times investigation showed that the analysts were being briefed by the Pentagon on what to say and had undisclosed conflicts of interest via military contracts.
Retired Green Beret Robert S. Bevelacqua, a former Fox News an
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