There's a lunar eclipse right now

Thanks to reader Bluesman for the heads up. Just took a few shots with my camera.

Read More......

Wash Post on McCain female lobbyist story

Read it here. Read More......

NY Times: McCain staffers confronted Senator about inappropriately close relationship with young blonde female lobbyist

UPDATE: The conservative American Spectator says the NYT had this story over a month ago but McCain threatened to sue them. If the Times if running with the story now, after holding off for 5 weeks, it means they nailed it with more witnesses. Actually, this goes back two months.

UDPATE: McCain refuses to deny an affair or that his staff had to intervene.



Tonight, the New York Times posted a blockbuster article about the relationship between Senator John McCain and a female lobbyist nearly half his age. As you can see from the photo above, this has become the breaking news sensation on cable news.

The full article warrants a read. But for me, the excerpts about the intervention of McCain's staff are just fascinating, and disturbing:

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity....

Mr. McCain’s confidence in his ability to distinguish personal friendships from compromising connections was at the center of questions advisers raised about Ms. Iseman.

The lobbyist, a partner at the firm Alcalde & Fay, represented telecommunications companies for whom Mr. McCain’s commerce committee was pivotal. Her clients contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaigns.

Mr. Black said Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman were friends and nothing more. But in 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, “Why is she always around?”

That February, Mr. McCain and Ms. Iseman attended a small fund-raising dinner with several clients at the Miami-area home of a cruise-line executive and then flew back to Washington along with a campaign aide on the corporate jet of one of her clients, Paxson Communications. By then, according to two former McCain associates, some of the senator’s advisers had grown so concerned that the relationship had become romantic that they took steps to intervene.

A former campaign adviser described being instructed to keep Ms. Iseman away from the senator at public events, while a Senate aide recalled plans to limit Ms. Iseman’s access to his offices.

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

Separately, a top McCain aide met with Ms. Iseman at Union Station in Washington to ask her to stay away from the senator. John Weaver, a former top strategist and now an informal campaign adviser, said in an e-mail message that he arranged the meeting after “a discussion among the campaign leadership” about her.

This is a story that will probably "have legs." It is about ethics, it is about adultery (an issue the religious right claims to take seriously), and let's not forget that John McCain left his first wife, after she was seriously injured, so he could be with his second wife, 17 years his junior. Interesting that it broke the same week the McCain campaign chose to thrust Mrs. McCain into the spotlight to attack Michelle Obama. Read More......

McCain finished January in debt, which is why he wants public financing

FEC reports for January were filed today. And, it's no wonder John McCain is so freaked about money for the general election. It's not about principle. He's got no fund raising capacity.

Matt Stoller has the McCain numbers. McCain's debts were more than his cash on hand. Not good for the GOP front runner. Overall, McCain raised $12.7 million in January and $48.7 million since he started his campaign. Barack Obama raised $36.7 in January alone and over $137 million since his campaign started. This month is going to break records for Obama, too.

Hasn't been much pick up in the media about McCain's paltry campaign war chest. But, it should cause them to question McCain's obsession with using public financing for the general election. The media eats it up, of course, without ever questioning McCain's motives.

Remember when the GOP used to be the party that raised the most money? Read More......

In Texas, students march 7.3 miles for the right to vote

This is a great story -- and it will inspire you. It's another reason why I love Burnt Orange Report. You have to check out the post to see the pictures:

Early voting starts today in Texas. In Waller County, a primarily rural county about 60 miles outside Houston, the county made the decision to offer only one early voting location: at the County Courthouse in Hempstead, TX, the county seat.

Prairie View A&M; students organized to protest the decision, because they felt it hindered their ability to vote. For background, Prairie View A&M; is one of Texas' historically Black universities. It has a very different demographic feel than the rest of the county. There has been a long history of dispute over what the students feel is disenfranchisement. There was a lot of outrage in 2006, when students felt they were unfairly denied the right to vote when their registrations somehow did not get processed.

And, today, Karl-Thomas Musselman posted this video of the students marching for the right to vote. It's 2008 and they're still marching to vote:
Would that the traditional media focused on stories like this instead of the incessant harping about the fake issues in which they get so caught up. Students having to march to vote -- that is REAL NEWS. (And, while this may not matter to the punditry, the fact that people still have to march to insure that they can vote isn't exactly something of which we can be proud.) Read More......

Inflation increases, again

The GOP policies are crushing America. Inflation is now up to 4.3% compared to a year ago and with oil prices hitting record highs, it's not going to come down any time soon. Giving away free money to Wall Street isn't going to help either. Read More......

O'Reilly says he may need to "lynch" Mrs. Obama

I'm guessing that proposed FOX debate is now off for good.

Read More......

Connecticut state legislator comes out, becomes nation’s first openly-gay African-American state legislator

Very cool. Read More......

McCain: tough on Obama, soft on terrorists

Senator McCain trotted out a truly weird attack against Senator Obama last night, accusing him of wanting to invade Pakistan and thereby undermine our good buddy President Musharraf. What Obama said, of course, if he had actionable intelligence on al Qaeda leaders, he would drop a bomb on them. Yay! Not only is McCain apparently criticizing Obama for believing we should go after terrorists, what he's objecting to isn't even particularly controversial. We've notified nations of military operations as they occurred for a while, perhaps most notably in strikes against terrorist targets under Clinton but also with increasing frequency and aggressiveness after 9/11.

Spencer Ackerman, who is truly a national treasure, in writing for the new -- and excellent -- Washington Independent, rightly shreds McCain on this issue:

Good to know that John McCain, who allegedly knows something about defending America in the course of advocating a war that has made America drastically less secure, would do absolutely nothing. Good to know that John McCain doesn’t care that those people murdered 3,000 Americans. Good to know that John McCain doesn’t think those souls demand justice. Good to know that John McCain would read an intelligence report about al-Qaeda in Pakistan planning to murder more Americans and say LOL HAI LOOK IRAN KTHXBAI.

Senator John McCain: Oh noes!! Read More......

Book event TODAY in Ann Arbor

For our Michigan readers, just a heads up that I'll be doing a reading/signing/discussion with my new book, Still Broken, today at the Borders in downtown Ann Arbor. It's at 632 Liberty St, a block off of State St, at 7:00 p.m. Free coffee and snacks, they say, so come on over and introduce yourself! There should be a good crowd, a fun Q&A;, and a nice mid-week break from the grind.

Again: 7 p.m., Ann Arbor MI, at Borders on 632 Liberty St. Signing and discussion of Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures from Baghdad to the Pentagon. See you there!

And, of course, treat this as an open thread.

UPDATE: Just for the heck of it, this hits wayyyyyy too close to home. Read More......

Clinton supporters raising "at least" $10 million for anti-Obama Swift Boat campaign

UPDATE: Via Ben Smith, you can see the first ad produced by the 527. It's not on the air yet. The head of the 527 claims they are all about the positive. That's all. Just positive. The first line of the ad is "If speeches could create jobs, we wouldn't be facing a recession"....but, remember, they're going to stay positive. We shall see. Anyone watching MSNBC last night surely knows that Clinton media guru Mark Penn wants to go negative against Obama. He was sending that message loud and clear through Howard Fineman.

_______________________

It had to come to this. Clinton allies are raising millions in a desperate, last ditch effort to defeat Obama by ruining his image with a Swift-Boat-style 527.

ABC's Jake Tapper reports the new group, called "The American Leadership Project," is planning to run anti-Obama ads in Ohio -- and maybe Texas and Pennsylvania, too. According to Tapper, the ads are "aimed at tarnishing" Obama. Marc Ambinder adds these details:

Allies of Hillary Clinton plan an expensive, stealth campaign to buttress her standing in the must-win states of Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.

They're canvassing Clinton donors for pledges of up to $100,000 in the hope of raising at least $10M by the end of next week. The money will be placed in the account of a political committee organized under section 527 of the tax code.

Not so stealthy anymore.

You know, this campaign has, for the most part, stayed on the high road. There have been some bursts of negativity of late, but by and large, it's been pretty clean. Looks like that is about to end.

Clinton's supporters are absolutely obsessed with driving up Obama's negatives. You get the sense that they cannot believe that Obama's campaign is making them work for what they rightly deserve. Now, instead of picking out their White House office furniture, they're forced to raise large amounts of money to tear down the Democratic front-runner. After all these years in power, the Clintons clearly have rich, rich friends who can chip in $100,000 on their behalf. To contrast, Obama's campaign hit an unprecedented landmark today: over 500,000 contributors. Clinton's campaign couldn't come close to that -- so she needs her wealthy friends to bail her out.

Over the past year, Obama has shown he can withstand the Clinton's negative onslaught. But, it does make one wonder how far the Clintons and their allies are willing to push this fight. If they want to make this ugly, it's not like she (or her husband) have got the cleanest records around. Far from it. And, I'm just talking issues, like those votes where she supported Bush on the Iraq war in October 2002 and the Iran resolution in September 2007.

Do we really want to go down the path of trying to make our candidates damaged goods should they win the nomination? Clinton and her allies says yes. Read More......

Hawaii had massive turnout in "landslide" victory for Obama

The size of the victory and the huge turnout were impressive. Yesterday, Democratic Party officials were thinking over 10,000 people would show up. It was more than 37,000:

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama won a landslide victory in the state of his birth last night as an unprecedented turnout at the Hawaii Democratic caucus overwhelmed precinct volunteers and party officials.

With 100 percent of precincts counted, Obama had 28,347 votes, or 75.7 percent, to 8,835, or 23.6 percent, for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

The tally totaled more than 37,000 votes, showing that turnout far surpassed even the highest estimates of Democratic Party officials.

Excitement about Obama, who graduated from Punahou School, raised interest in tonight’s caucuses to record levels. In comparison, the last caucus in 2004 had a total of nearly 4,000, which was considered a strong turnout.

This year, so many states have had an impact and really mattered. Turnout has been amazing. Democrats are energized. Take a look at the turnout via CNN in Wisconsin, a key swing state in November: 1.1 million Democrats voted. McCain and the GOPers got just over 400,000 votes.

You sure get the sense that Democrats are fired up and ready to go. (Full disclosure: I borrowed that line.) Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Obama did win the Hawaii caucuses last night by a very wide margin. More on that later.

Congratulations to Josh Marshall and the crew at Talking Points Memo. They won a George Polk award for their reporting on the U.S. Attorneys scandal. They do amazing reporting and analysis at TPM -- the award is well-deserved.

Okay, have at it. Read More......

Florida makes progress

It's hard to believe this is only happening now despite the "controversy" surrounding this burning hot issue that is not an issue in the modern world. I wonder if the Florida Baptist Convention has accepted that the earth is round, or perhaps that's just a little too controversial to address during these troubled times.

The teaching standards for Florida schools include the word "evolution" for the first time, under a decision Tuesday by the state school board.

The board approved the use of the term "scientific theory of evolution" in public schools science standards.

Previously, the term was couched by using phrases such as "change over time." The reaction in Tallahassee from those opposed and those for the change was fairly low key, Local 10 reported.

Read More......

Democrat calls for food safety changes

Definitely. A major overhaul of the system is desperately needed.

The agency’s twin mandates of promoting the nation’s agriculture and monitoring it for safety have become blurred, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro said.

“Food safety ought to be of a high enough priority in this nation that we have a single agency that deals with it and not an agency that is responsible for promoting a product, selling a product and then as an afterthought dealing with how our food supply is safe,” said DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for the USDA’s funding.

Read More......

Porsche plays the legal bully game with London

Please. If Porsche and the rest of the German automakers would quit this attitude and start producing cars that polluted less it would be much better for everyone. Germany has already forced the EU to allow automakers to get away with heavy gas guzzlers and now the luxury car maker is whining about about gas guzzlers having to pay more money to drive in London.

Somehow it's hard to sympathize with drivers who are paying well over $100 to fill their tank (if not closer to $200) on top of the $100,000+ they pay for the SUV. We're not talking about people who have to buy a big truck out of necessity for work to pay their bills. Driving a beast like this is a luxury that they chose on their own. If they can afford those costs so easily, they can afford to pay for their pollution. Porsche ought to spend more money on building environmentally friendly cars and less money on lawyers and lobbyists who bully others into global warming. Read More......

Clinton's road to the nomination is becoming insurmountable

It is becoming more unlikely that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee.

This isn't a surprise to me. I've been thinking that for a long time now -- and even said it in one of our first podcasts in early November. Back then, such an idea was mocked. Believe me, it was mocked. Now, the campaign hasn't played out exactly like I, or anyone, thought it would, but, the idea that Hillary won't be the Democratic nominee is becoming real. The difference now is that the media, the pundits and the Democratic brain trust (such as it is), who all believed Hillary was the inevitable nominee, are now starting to grasp the new reality. She has a very, very tough road to the nomination. It's almost insurmountable.

The margin of tonight's loss in Wisconsin is large. And, as we were reminded constantly over the past week, Wisconsin was supposed to be more favorable to Clinton. But, when the people of Wisconsin voted, Hillary lost - big. Obama's pledged delegate lead continues to expand -- and the super-delegate total will also start to increase as the super-delegates move towards a "proven winner."

The Clinton campaign's recent negative ad campaign didn't work. The debate about debates was a dud, and the plagiarism charge went nowhere. But, Clinton is going to have to decide just how ugly she wants the rest of this race to be from here on out. On MSNBC tonight, the painfully pompous pundit Howard Fineman reported that top Clinton staffers think their negative campaigning worked -- get this -- because she didn't lose by 25 points. Let's review. On Pollster.com, right before today's vote, Obama was ahead of Clinton, 48.9% to 41.9%. She didn't move up a bit today. Obama did. He beat her by over 16 points (per the latest tally). If that's the best Hillary's campaign has, then Obama will definitely win the nomination.

For the past year, we were led to believe that Clinton had built an incomparable campaign team. That's proven not to be true. Top aide Mark Penn is a disaster (and according to Fineman, Penn is the one who wants to go really negative - good luck with that.) The Clinton team simply had no plan for any of the states after February 5th - they knew, and loudly told everyone who would listen, that they were going to win on Super Tuesday. Now that we're far beyond Super Tuesday, with Hillary falling more and more behind (the AP tonight called her "fading"), her campaign's bizarre response has been to dismiss any state won by Obama. Just this weekend, The Washington Post reported that the Clinton campaign just figured out the rules in Texas (the primary/caucus is only two weeks away). And, Clinton didn't field a full slate of delegates for Pennsylvania. Those are supposed to be rookie mistakes.

Hillary Clinton deserves better than the campaign she's had. But, Clinton put this campaign together. She owns it.

Now, we're moving on to Texas and Ohio. The Clinton campaign made those two states their newest "firewalls." They've set the standard. If she doesn't win both convincingly, it's over. It's already starting to look like "over" began three hours ago. Read More......