Her latest whopper

The candidate who has loaned herself MILLIONS of dollars and is still in the hole, is now saying she's the most "fiscally responsible" candidate!

On her last day of campaigning in South Dakota, Hillary Clinton told a group of supporters huddled inside a ballroom that South Dakotans should pick her on Tuesday because of her economic experience. “If you will vote for me next Tuesday, you are voting for the most fiscally responsible candidate in this race on either side of the aisle,” Clinton said, a blatant jab at both Barack Obama and John McCain. Clinton was referring to her practice of offering explanations on how she will pay for all of the programs she has laid out, including her very expensive universal health care plan. “We need a president who will put us back on the path to fiscal responsibility,” she said. “I am the only candidate running who has told you specifically how I will pay for everything I propose because I want you to hold me accountable.” There are a couple of problems with this claim, though. First, her campaign is approximately $20 million in debt, even after she loaned over $11 million of her own money to the cause. Several vendors and suppliers have come forward to say they are owed money by the campaign, and her former chief strategist, Mark Penn, is owed $5 million for his services before he parted ways with Clinton. More...

Just like Enron

Just like the Enron criminals did, it looks like the oil companies may be manipulating the market to make out like bandits, while Americans cut back on "luxuries" like food to fill the gas tank so they can go to work.

Probe of crude oil trading revealed: Examined over 6 months, focus on possible "futures market manipulation."

Scott McClellan, coming clean

Scott McClellan is making waves with his new book alleging that Bush personally okayed the leaking of Valerie Plame's name, and deliberately misled, used propaganda, and cherry-picked intelligence to lead us into the Iraq war. Representative Robert Wexler of Florida is now calling for McClellan to testify before Congress. McClellan says he's coming out now because he has a "loyalty to the truth" that supercedes his loyalty to his friend Bush. That's all well and good, and we can all wish that McClellan had come out sooner, but late is better than never. Some say McClellan is only doing it for the money, and there's no doubt that money factors into this. On the other hand, McClellan, facing the wrath of the Bush administration (and we know what they're willing to do) probably wanted to make sure he'd have an income when he decided to finally tell us the truth, so I can forgive him waiting until he had a lucrative (we assume) book deal before coming clean. A man's gotta eat. But McClellan, if he really does have a loyalty to the truth, needs to now testify, under oath, to the veracity of his allegations. He owes it to us, he owes it to history. If McClellan's allegations are true, then Bush is not only a traitor (as Bush's father would call anyone who knowingly revealed a CIA operative's identity), he is a war criminal as well, and it's time for McClellan to go on the record.

OIbermann's special comment on Hillary

After this? No.

While I thought there were plenty of other more qualified candidates and people who would be much better fits for Obama, I was okay with the idea of offering Hillary the VP slot. I thought a better place for her was as Senate Majority Leader, where she'd do an excellent job and would be a definite improvement over Harry Reid. I even liked the idea of Hillary spending the rest of her life on the Supreme Court. But after this? No.

Is Hillary hoping someone shoots Obama?

Apparently Hillary has gone crazy again. After playing nice for a couple of weeks, she's now ramping up the personal attacks on Obama and threatening to split the party at the convention. And today, it sure seems like she just said that she's staying in the race JUST IN CASE OBAMA GETS SHOT. I'm NOT making this up. NYTimes:

Senator Hillary Clinton just adamantly denied all reports that she has had any contact with Senator Barack Obama or his campaign about her exit from the race. She also referred to the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 Democratic campaign as a reason she should continue to campaign. [...] Historically, she said, nomination fights have gone on longer. “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,” she said.

Sexism trumps racism, or is it the other way around?

Hillary seems to be taking a new tack -- openly blaming sexism for keeping her from winning the nomination. While sexism certainly continues to exist in this country, just as does racism, there is something she hasn't considered about her argument. She has been insinuating, and her supporters openly saying, that Obama cannot win the general election because of racism. In fact, that is the current "whispering campaign." (Look up "whispering campaign" for an historical perspective.) But now Hillary is hinting she couldn't win the nomination because of sexism. Okay. So if racism keeps Obama from being elected, and sexism keeps Hillary from winning the nomination, why does she think that sexism wouldn't keep her from winning the general? Is the sexism problem -- which she's complaining was so bad it kept her from beating Obama -- going to disappear if Obama is swept out of the way? Last I saw him on TV, McCain was a male. She hasn't thought the logic through. But then again, it's essentially the same logic when she was saying that Obama was unelectable, while hoping we would overlook the fact that she couldn't beat Obama for the nomination. If Obama is unelectable, and Hillary can't beat him, how are we supposed to conclude that Hillary is electable?

Glass ceilings

There is certainly nothing wrong with a woman as president, just as there's nothing wrong with an African-American, or a Hispanic, or any minority. But we only get ONE president every four to eight years, so SOMEONE is going to be disappointed. :-) That said, I've always been curious about those who are supporting Hillary for the prime reason that she's a woman, not because she's the better candidate. Do they really want the first woman president to be the wife of a former president? Wouldn't it shatter the glass ceiling into smaller pieces if the first woman president got there without the marriage benefit? That's not to say that Hillary's marriage to Bill is the only reason she's ever won an election -- because no one could ever know how she might have done if Bill had never been president. But on the campaign trail, she herself kept referring to those wonderful Bill Clinton years and hinted that if she were president we'd return to that time, so she was definitely trading on her marriage as a reason to vote for her. In fact, she counts her years as First Lady -- the wife of the President -- as "experience" for why she has more of it than Obama. Some Hillary supporters accuse Obama supporters of only supporting him because he's black, begging the question of whether Hillary supporters are only supporting her because she's a woman. And Hillary herself once said that the reason she was running was to shatter "America's highest glass ceiling" -- i.e., because she's a woman and it's time for a woman president, whereas I don't recall Obama ever saying that the reason he was running was because he was black.

What "white voter" problem?

What "white voter" problem? 75,000 people jam a rally to see and hear Obama in Portland Oregon.

Florida and Michigan won't save Hillary

Hillary is counting on Florida and Michigan counting. Never mind that it was McAuliffe and Ickes, two biggies in the Clinton campaign, who fought for and supported the rules calling for the stripping of delegates from states that moved up their primaries too early. And it was Ickes himself who voted to strip the delegates from the two states to punish them, so the Hillary campaign's screeching about "disenfranchising" those voters is hypocritical at best. But now, even counting Florida and Michigan won't help her overtake Obama.

Interviews with those considering how to handle the two states' banished convention delegates found little interest in the former first lady's best-case scenario. Her position, part of a formidable comeback challenge, is that all the delegates be seated in accordance with their disputed primaries. Even if they were, it wouldn't erase Barack Obama's growing lead in delegates.

What Obama really thinks about guns

Just as we Obama supporters knew all along, his "bitter" comments were taken out of context and misrepresented.

Before Bitter-Gate: What Obama Said Hours Earlier About Guns "We need sensible gun laws," said the Senator. "I just got back from Montana where just about everyone has guns. In that culture, fathers and sons bond over hunting. You can't take that away from rural America. But the inner city is different, and we should tighten the laws on gun purchases and close the loopholes in gun show sales to unscrupulous buyers. The gun control people and the right to bear arms people are talking past each other about disconnected topics." The remarks, delivered at an event in Silicon Valley and shared with The Huffington Post by an attendee, suggest that even in private, Obama's view of gun ownership is far from the strict or condescending anti-Second Amendment characterization that his critics have painted.

Simply not their kind of guy

Jon Stewart, as usual, points out the elephant in the room, and says what every other bloviating empty skull in the media is afraid to say. "Simply not their kind of guy": Why West Virginia doesn't like Barack Obama.

President Bush, SHUT THE HELL UP!

A real barn-burner from Keith Olbermann tonight. In tonight's "special comment," this generation's Edward R. Murrow tells Bush to shut the hell up.

At long last, is it over?

Is the long nightmare of the Democratic primary fracas ended?

The big news is, of course, John Edwards has finally endorsed, and he's endorsing Obama.

I think this means the Dem fight is over. With Hillary now saying she regrets her racial comments, her promising to work for the 'Democratic nominee', and saying quite clearly that picking McCain over Obama is a "mistake," with Edwards endorsing Obama we have, for all intents and purposes, the presumptive nominee.

I say the party should move, as soon as Obama is sworn in, to make Hillary our next Senate Majority Leader. Her talents and tenacity are desperately needed in that position. I like Harry Reid, I think he's a fine Senator, but as Majority Leader, I think he's disappointed us too many times.

Hillary is pining for the fiords

Hillary Clinton stars in her own version of Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch! Excerpts: 2:57 p.m., Yeager Airport, Charleston, W.Va.: A steep descent brings Clinton's plane to Charleston's hilltop airport. After an appropriate wait, she steps from the plane and pretends to wave to a crowd of supporters; in fact, she is waving to 10 photographers underneath the airplane's wing. She pretends to spot an old friend in the crowd, points and gives another wave; in fact, she is waving at an aide she had been talking with on the plane minutes earlier. [...] She stops at Ellen's Homemade Ice Cream and orders a scoop of espresso Oreo and a scoop of butter pecan. "Ooh, that looks good," she says after taking the confection, then pauses. "Now, let's see. Who's got my money?" asks the woman who has lent her campaign $11 million to keep it afloat. She laughs. "Where -- where'd they go, the people with my money?" Finally, two aides arrive to retire Clinton's dessert debt.

Florida: Land of teh stoopid

A substitute teacher does a magic trick for kids and makes a toothpick disappear. Next thing he hears, he's in trouble. Complaints about his performance. He's being fired. The problem? A student accused him of "wizardry."

The telephone call that spelled the end of Jim Piculas' career as a substitute teacher in Pasco came on a January day about a week after he performed the disappearing-toothpick trick for a group of rapt middle school students. Pat Sinclair, who oversees substitute teachers in the Pasco County School District, was on the phone. She told Piculas there had been a complaint about his performance at Rushe Middle School in Land O' Lakes. He asked what she meant. "She said, 'You've been accused of wizardry,' " Piculas said.