Obama up by 17 points with 84% of vote in

Wow. And the pundits were saying that Obama had to win by at least 5 or it wasn't a real victory. Read More......

Russert on Clinton: She has to win 58% to 65% of remaining elected delegates

Tim Russert on MSNBC:
- Really striking how much the gender gap has shrunk, Hillary won white women by 53-45.
- Obama won white men 62-36.
- It appears... that white men, who had been voting for John Edwards, have gravitated rather dramatically for Barack Obama.
- This really is now a game of mathematics (i.e., delegates).
- After tonight, Hillary has to win 58% of the remaining elected delegates.
- If you assume that Obama is going to win some states like VT, WY and SD, and even the Clinton campaign would acknowledge that, you suddenly get to the point where Clinton has to win 65% of the elected delegates of TX, OH and PA. That is such an uphill battle. Read More......

NBC says Obama wins Wisconsin

Looking at the exit polls, below, Obama has a 2-1 lead with men, and Hillary has only a 3% lead with women. Obama is catching up with women, Hillary's strong suit, at least in Wisconsin.

From CNN:


UPDATE: Joe thinks Obama is going to get close to 55%.

So my friend Jim was telling the truth. Surprise surprise. Russert on MSNBC sayts that Obama "has successfully broadened his coalition" in terms of what they're seeing in Wisconsin. Hillary is keeping her lead with white women over 50. But she's not showing any inroads with young voters or independents. Obama is winning them 2-1. Russert is really down on Hillary, saying her negative ads didn't work in Wisconsin. Read More......

Polls close in Wisconsin at 9pm Eastern

Stay tuned. Read More......

Take this with a grain of salt

My buddy Jim Geraghty, the kind of leaked exit polls, says it's a blow-out for Obama over Clinton in Wisconsin. But I'll wait to see the actual results. Read More......

88% of military officers say Bush has stretched military "dangerously thin"

No way. The republicans always tell us how much they love the military, as they're cutting the VA's budget and as Dick Cheney oversaw one of the biggest cuts in military spending in US history while he was Defense Secretary. From CNN:

The Iraq war has strained U.S. forces to the point where they could not fight another large-scale war, according to a survey of military officers.

U.S. troops patrol Haifa Street in Baghdad last week.

Of those surveyed, 88 percent believe the demands of the Iraq war have "stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin."

On the other hand, 56 percent of the officers disagree that the war has "broken" the military.

Eighty percent of officers believe it is unreasonable to expect the U.S. military to wage another major war successfully at present.

Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for a New American Security on Tuesday issued the U.S. Military Index, a survey of 3,400 present and former U.S. military officers.

Read More......

Bush appointed Judge, Robert Somma, arrested for DUI while wearing a dress

UPDATE: A reader wrote and says that the story is wrong, this guy was not appointed by Bush but rather by a state official. Anyone else have any input on this?

Not that there's anything wrong with the dress part, but he's a Bush judge, and they DO think there's something wrong with it.

When cops arrived, the paper reported, Somma was wearing a cocktail dress, fishnet stockings, women’s heels and fumbled through a purse for his driver’s license.

Read More......

Oil closes above $100

Dick Cheney isn't just smiling, he's probably bouncing off the ceiling he's so happy. Tough luck if you have to work and pay for gas. Oil closes above $100 for the first time ever. Meanwhile the dollar tanked, helping to drive up prices and the Fed is giving away money as though it was free. This is getting ugly. Read More......

US court blocks website, just like China

Who is the hypocrite now? Heaven knows we would never want to allow whistleblowers to expose corruption. It's simply not done in proper circles.

An international website that claims to blow the whistle on corporate and governmental fraud vowed yesterday to defy attempts by a US court to close it down. Wikileaks allows whistleblowers to anonymously post documents in an attempt to expose corruption and wrongdoing. Its owners said yesterday that a Californian judge had ordered that the site be taken offline last week, after an injunction from a Swiss bank.

Read More......

Clinton campaign to steal Obama's delegates he won via the primaries?

There's a report from Roger Simon at the Politico - someone who Joe says is a "real" reporter, i.e., he doesn't just report unsubstantiated rumors - that a senior Clinton campaign official told the reporter that they are planning on trying to take Obama's delegates that he won in the primaries.

What does this mean? Take Virginia. Obama beat Clinton 64% to 35%. That gave Obama 54 delegates to Clinton's 29 delegates. The Clinton campaign is reportedly going to try to convince those 54 Obama delegates not to support Obama at the convention, even though you voted for those delegates to support Obama. We're not talking superdelegates - we're talking the delegates you voted for in the various state primaries. We're talking your vote.

Clinton's campaign says the story isn't true. This means that Roger Simon needs to now give his side of the story. Having said that, the Clinton campaign has gone increasingly negative in the past few days - accusing Obama of plagiarism (when Hillary herself has adopted Obama's "change" theme), and they've accused Obama of skirting debates when he's already done 18 of them and agreed to 2 more in the next few weeks (it's not clear why the Obama campaign didn't counter-offer a series of debates about Iraq and Iran - that would have ended the discussion). That doesn't prove that this story is true, but this delegate-stealing story is the kind of news that is consistent with a campaign that is sounding increasingly worried and is resorting to increasingly nasty tactics.

And putting all that aside, how is it even possible that our rules permit this? Read More......

Texas, and maybe Ohio, don't matter now either

Via Atrios (which would be a street in Rome, if I had my way). Read More......

Harper's interviews our AJ about his new Iraq book

From Harper's:

HARPER'S: You write in your book about political pressure on DIA analysts. How significant was such pressure?

AJ: It was a huge problem. In terms of accuracy of information going up the chain of command and in terms of morale, it was probably the most significant problem. We heard all the time that our reports were too pessimistic–”go back and change it.”...

Then the day before the election, a guy from the State Department came over, saying that we needed to report on how the secularists were making a big move. All the analysts said there was no evidence for that conclusion, but there was a ton of pressure from higher up to say so anyway. Repeatedly, we needed to tell people what they wanted to hear, even if what was predicted didn’t happen. And of course, after we were forced to say the secularists were surging, they got crushed.

You can check out, and buy, AJ's book on Amazon. Read More......

The Wisconsin Primary, our latest podcast

In this episode, AMERICAblog deputy editor Joe Sudbay and I talk about today's primaries and caucuses in Wisconsin and Hawaii, upcoming contests in Ohio and Texas, the campaign between Hillary and Obama going negative, the latest on Superdelegates, and whether John McCain can survive his own temper.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking here. For those who don't know, a podcast is really just a radio show. Click the link and your computer should play it automatically, assuming you have speakers and your volume is turned up.

As always, you can subscribe to the AMERICAblog podcast via iTunes here, or you can subscribe to the podcast's RSS feed here. And you can listen to any of our old shows via either of the two links in the preceding sentence, or you can find them in the Podcast tab in the upper right corner of this page. Read More......

Tuesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning. Fidel threw off my timing this morning.

Another primary day that matters (well, unless Hillary Clinton loses, then Hawaii and Wisconsin are added to the long list of states that don't count.)

Lots of negativity in the air these days -- nothing of consequence, of course. A lot of distractions trying to change the course of the campaign. Seems to me Senator Clinton deserves better than the advice and strategy she's been getting from her top advisers.

Okay, get threading. Read More......

Castro quitting as President of Cuba

Could be a wild day in Miami.

The bane of existence for ten U.S. presidents has resigned. Castro is "El Comandante" no more:

Saying he is no longer healthy enough to hold office, Cuban leader Fidel Castro has announced he will not seek reelection after 49 years in power and nearly 19 months sidelined by illness, marking the first official step in a long-awaited succession in the island's leadership.

''It would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer,'' the 81-year-old Castro wrote in a letter published in Tuesday's editions of Cuban newspapers. ``This I say devoid of all drama.''

His tenure sure hasn't been devoid of drama.

I know this question has been asked for decades: How long before Cuba becomes the new U.S. tourist destination? Read More......

US banks gobble up government free money

But please do not call this a government bailout. Just because banks are "borrowing" tens of billions from US taxpayers below inflation rates under new conditions (which are troubling) doesn't mean it's a handout. Hundreds of billions down the drain, but all is forgiven. Take one guess who is getting stuck with the bill? Surprise! It's you!

“The TAF ... allows the banks to borrow money against all sort of dodgy collateral,” says Christopher Wood, analyst at CLSA. “The banks are increasingly giving the Fed the garbage collateral nobody else wants to take ... [this] suggests a perilous condition for America’s banking system.”

The Fed announced the TAF tool on December 12 as part of a co-ordinated package of measures unveiled by leading western central banks to calm money markets.

The measure marks a distinct break from past US policy. Before its introduction, banks either had to raise money in the open market or use the so-called “discount window” for emergencies. However, last year many banks refused to use the discount window, even though they found it hard to raise funds in the market, because it was associated with the stigma of bank failure.

Read More......

Dick Cheney is smiling today

UPDATE: Oil now at $97.48 but rally "lacks conviction" according to CNBC.

Oil back over $96. The GOP Congress of not so long ago were all tripping over themselves to give even more corporate welfare to Big Oil and don't think they won't try it again. They love helping the least needy, whether in the corporate boardrooms or the oil fields. Read More......

Ben & Jerry's new flavor: "Cherries for Change"

Their choice, Obama.

"If there was ever a need for real change, and if there ever was a candidate to inspire us and make that happen, it's now," said Ben Cohen.

Added Jerry Greenfield: "Barack is showing that when you lead with your values and follow what you have inside that good things will happen."

So what would you call McCain's ice cream flavor? Read More......

Bush-FDA evaluates wrong pharmaceutical factory

Why am I not surprised? Read More......