NBC News has allocated so far a 75-65 split for Clinton out of Pennsylvania; 18 delegates are not allocated yet.Read More......
With that, Obama now leads by 156 pledged delegates: 1,482-1,326.
Our superdelegate total is Clinton 262, Obama 237.
In all, Obama now leads by 131 overall: 1,719-1,588.
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.Read More......
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work. It is past time for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to acknowledge that the negativity, for which she is mostly responsible, does nothing but harm to her, her opponent, her party and the 2008 election.
If nothing else, self interest should push her in that direction. Mrs. Clinton did not get the big win in Pennsylvania that she needed to challenge the calculus of the Democratic race....
It is getting to be time for the superdelegates to do what the Democrats had in mind with they created superdelegates: settle a bloody race that cannot be won at the ballot box. Mrs. Clinton once had a big lead among the party elders, but has been steadily losing it, in large part because of her negative campaign. If she is ever to have a hope of persuading these most loyal of Democrats to come back to her side, let alone win over the larger body of voters, she has to call off the dogs.
The victory in Pennsylvania has been preordained for months. Clinton can't win the nomination. I predicted last November that Clinton wouldn't be the Democratic nominee (back then, just five months ago, very few people shared that view, believe me). But, I don't think anyone imagined the process would go on so long -- or that Hillary wouldn't accept her defeat. She is going to continue her destructive ways, although, it's going to be tough considering her campaign is in the red. Clinton's campaign is running negative attack ads against Obama while it's running on fumes and not paying its bills. That says a lot about what we're dealing with. Last night, on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart asked Obama a funny, but actually prescient ,question:Now, you gotta love the Clinton campaign's spin machine. According to Ben Smith, a spokesperson for the campaign claims they raised a lot of money tonight, well, a lot for them, not compared to Obama. The Clinton donors should just write their checks to Mark Penn's firm (he's owed $4.5 million) or maybe some of the other debtors who are owed over $6 million.At one point, Stewart asked Obama whether he worried "that you could win the nomination at the Convention and defeat John McCain in the general and, you know, go to the inauguration and Hillary would still be running?"It sure feels that way.
We know the media loves a circus and no one puts on a better political circus than the Clintons. So, I refuse to let Chris Matthews or Mark Halperin or Jim VandeHei or George Stephanopoulos (or even Chuck Todd who I actually respect) tell us this isn't over for Clinton. It is.
[W]ith Barack Obama outspending her by as much as three to one, Clinton insists that if he doesn't win Pennsylvania, it shows voters have big doubts. Essentially, she's trying to turn losing into winning and turn winning around into losing. Never mind the fact that Obama can outspend her because he's raised so much more money, from many more supporters, supporters who are responsible for giving him the lead by every viable measure of the race.Read More......
Philadelphia officials are expecting a crush of voters between now and 8 p.m. ET -- a surge that would come on top of what is said to already be a record turnout for a primary.The crush is on. Read More......
It's NOT me it's you!(Hat tip, Ben Smith.) Read More......
you go girl. seriously.........go.
Dear Baby, Welcome to Dumpsville. Population, You.
As you may have noticed Drudge has up what he says are 5 PM exit poll numbers showing Clinton 52%, Obama 48%. I suspect they are 'accurate' as far as early, un-weighted exits can be. But let me point out that my recollection is that pretty much all the early and unweighted exits we've seen this cycle have turned out to be wrong. And often very wrong. So this has to be taken with a real grain of salt. And that's assuming they're not made up entirely.Keep in mind, these numbers are very subject to change...against Obama.
Late Update: Jim Geraghty at NRO has Obama 52%, Clinton 47%.
And to be clear, when I say take them with a grain of salt, I don't mean that in the garden variety, being responsible, 'we don't know for sure yet' kind of way. I really mean that these early unweighted numbers have routinely been way, way off.
Interviews with voters leaving the polls showed almost six in 10 were women and three in 10 were age 65 or over.CNN offers this:
Some voters had a hard time making up their minds. One in five said they decided for whom to vote within the last week and about one in 10 said they made up their minds Tuesday, according to the preliminary results of exit polling for The Associated Press and television networks.
A quarter of voters had household family income of more than $100,000 last year and about as many reported having a postgraduate degree. Those groups tend to vote for Obama.
Obama is winning 92 percent of black voters, among his highest margin to date in that demographic. Meanwhile, Clinton is winning among voters 65 and over by a 23 point margin, 61 to 38 percent.Huffington Post has a very extensive report of all the numbers rolling in. Read More......
"[T]heir use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States."Kind of obvious what she meant. But two senior Hillary aides denied last night that Hillary meant nukes when she repeatedly implied over the past week that she'd nuke Iran, and when she explicitly said just that last night. And today I find out that Clinton campaign senior adviser Ann Lewis also said last night that Hillary didn't mean "nuclear weapons" when said we'd give Iran a "nuclear response."
Nine months after the crisis in the American mortgage market began to tear through the financial world, the cost to banks, in terms of their own sinking investments, is approaching $300 billion. To shore up their weakened finances, one bank after another is racing to raise capital — a total of $160 billion so far.Read More......
The pain is far from over. Even the most optimistic forecasters say banks will suffer billions of dollars in additional write-downs on mortgage investments and other debt in the months ahead. The final figure for the banks write-downs could eventually exceed $750 billion — twice some early estimates — if the economy sinks into a prolonged recession, some analysts say.
Holmes was later asked by reporters to clarify his estimate. He said he was "not trying to give an exact figure" and described 300,000 as a "reasonable extrapolation" from the 2006 estimate for the current total number of people who have died in Darfur of disease, hunger or in combat.Read More......
Holmes said the original 200,000 figure was based on a 2-year-old study by the World Health Organization. He said there were no plans now for a new scientific study to determine the precise number of deaths in Darfur caused by the conflict.
Asked if the figure could be even higher than 300,000, Holmes said: "I'm trying to be reasonable, conservative."
At one point, Stewart asked Obama whether he worried "that you could win the nomination at the Convention and defeat John McCain in the general and, you know, go to the inauguration and Hillary would still be running?"It sure feels that way.
"I think that we should be looking to create an umbrella of deterrence that goes much further than just Israel. Of course, I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States, but I would do the same with other countries in the region."3. Hillary reiterated her nuclear threat against Iran yesterday, telling ABC that if Iran attacked Israel with nukes, she'd "obliterate them" - widely interpreted to mean that she would nuke Iran.
"I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran," Clinton said. "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."4. Then last night, Senior Clinton campaign aide Howard Wolfson backs off Hillary's Iran comments, telling Politico's Ben Smith last night that "she wasn't referring to, or suggesting, nuclear weapons."
"In order to forestall that, creating some kind of a security agreement [with countries in the region] where we said, no, you do not need to acquire nuclear weapons. If you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran, the United States and hopefully our NATO allies would respond to that as well....6. Then, a senior Hillary aide tells CNN that she didn't mean to imply that she would extend the US nuclear umbrella to other countries in the region, even though this is what she repeatedly said over the past week. Read More......
"[T]heir use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States, which personally I believe would prevent it from happening. And that we would try to help the other countries that might be intimidated and bullied into submission by Iran because they were a nuclear power, avoid that fate by creating this new security umbrella."
Donna Brazile, an uncommitted superdelegate as an official of the Democratic National Committee, and manager of the 2000 Gore campaign. "There's a group around [Sen. Clinton] that really wants to take the fight to the convention. They don't care about the party. It scares me, and that's what scares a lot of superdelegates."Read More......
For the first time since the Spanish influenza of 1918, life expectancy is falling for a significant number of American women.I'd like to say this news is shocking, but nothing shocks me anymore. Oh, one other point from the article:
In nearly 1,000 counties that together are home to about 12 percent of the nation's women, life expectancy is now shorter than it was in the early 1980s, according to a study published today.
The downward trend is evident in places in the Deep South, Appalachia, the lower Midwest and in one county in Maine. It is not limited to one race or ethnicity but it is more common in rural and low-income areas. The most dramatic change occurred in two areas in southwestern Virginia (Radford City and Pulaski County), where women's life expectancy has decreased by more than five years since 1983.
The trend appears to be driven by increases in death from diabetes, lung cancer, emphysema and kidney failure. It reflects the long-term consequences of smoking, a habit that women took up in large numbers decades after men did, and the slowing of the historic decline in heart disease deaths.
The phenomenon appears to be not only new but distinctly American.All those countries have some form of system that provides for universal health care. Read More......
"If you look in Western Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, we don't see this," Murray said.
President Bush has set a record he'd presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll.And, John McCain, who doesn't know all that much about the economy, wants to inherit the Bush mantle and run on the Bush legacy. Okay. Read More......
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt.
The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman in January 1952, when the United States was enmeshed in the Korean War.
Bush's rating has worsened amid "collapsing optimism about the economy," says Charles Franklin, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies presidential approval. Record gas prices and a wave of home foreclosures have fueled voter angst.
Internet service providers must not release personal information about users in New Jersey without a valid subpoena, even to police, the state's highest court ruled Monday.Read More......
New Jersey's Supreme Court found that the state's constitution gives greater protection against unreasonable searches and seizures than the U.S. Constitution.
The court ruled that Internet providers should not disclose private information to anyone without a subpoena.
Dozens of Greek and Armenian priests and worshippers exchanged blows at one of Christianity's holiest shrines on Orthodox Palm Sunday, and used palm fronds to pummel police who tried to break up the brawl.Read More......
The fight came amid growing rivalry over religious rights at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, built over the site in Jerusalem where tradition says Jesus was buried and resurrected.
It erupted when Armenian clergy kicked out a Greek priest from their midst, pushed him to the ground and kicked him, according to witnesses.
When police intervened, some worshippers hit them with the palm fronds they were holding for the religious holiday.
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