Clinton to go all-out negative all week on Obama

From the NYT:

After struggling for months to dent Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy, the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now unleashing what one Clinton aide called a “kitchen sink” fusillade against Mr. Obama, pursuing five lines of attack since Saturday in hopes of stopping his political momentum....

After denouncing Mr. Obama over the weekend for an anti-Clinton flier about the Nafta trade treaty, and then sarcastically portraying his message of hope Sunday as naïve, Mrs. Clinton delivered a blistering speech on Monday that compared Mr. Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience to that of the candidate George W. Bush.

Does she really want to go there? I mean, she was the one who supported giving Bush the authority to go into Iraq - not Obama. Actually, I think she wants a fight on anything she can get at this point. It was illustrative during the last debate that when Hillary was raising her voice about plagiarism, Obama responded with a treatise on health care. He didn't take the bait, and his polls have kept rising. Clinton needs him to take the bait, needs him to get rattled, to get angry, to do something stupid, or else his momentum continues and she loses the entire nomination next Tuesday. And going positive, discussing ideas, isn't getting her anywhere. So, it's now time for the kitchen sink. The thing is, all Obama has to do is duck and the nomination is his. And Hillary will spend the next week destroying 7 years of successful hard work getting people to like her again. She's only 60 years old, she has another shot at this, is this the way she wants to go out? Read the rest of this post...

National Poll: Obama 50% - McCain 38%; Clinton 46% - McCain 46%

CBS Poll:

When all registered voters were asked who they favored in a head-to-head general election match up between Obama and McCain, Obama led by 12 percentage points, 50 to 38 percent.

In a Clinton-McCain match up, registered voters were evenly split, with 46 percent backing each candidate.

Obama beats McCain by 10 points among independents, while McCain beats Clinton by 17 points among that group.

Read the rest of this post...

John Solomon, my hero?

I just had a Scooby Doo moment, as Kathy Griffin would say, reading the Washington City Paper a few moments ago. They report that former AP, and then Washington Post, reporter John Solomon, who took over the cult-owned Washington Times a month ago, has directed the newspaper staff to update their style sheet. Among the changes reported, Hillary will be referred to as "Clinton" in headlines, gay marriage will be called "gay marriage" rather than "homosexual 'marriage'" (note the use of both homosexual and quotes around marriage), and the paper will start using the word gay over "homosexual."

Wow. These aren't small changes. As someone who has fought the journalistic use of the word "homosexual" for years - and a lot of gay groups have - I can tell you that these things matter (and aren't easy to get changed). Solomon appears to be trying to shift the paper from yellow journalism to actual journalism, at least a bit. And that's a step in the right direction, even (especially?) for the Moonie Times. Read the rest of this post...

ACTION: Tell AP to stop Swift Boating Democrats

Jane at FDL tells you what to do. Read the rest of this post...

Not politics, but cool

JacksonPollock.org. Totally fun. I made this with my mouse. Read the rest of this post...

Natl Review: "For a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics."

What the hell has happened to the Republican party that this is one of the party's key intellectual organs?

[F]or a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics.

So, blacks never married whites unless there was a communist involved? So does that make Clarence Thomas the communist or his wife? I'm actually surprised the conservative brain trust didn't find a way to weave in a bit of Jew-bashing too. Oh wait, they did:

[A]ll of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father.

Someone call Nedra Pickler at the Associated Press and see if she'd be willing to do a story on whether all inter-racial couples are communist Jews, or just the liberal ones. Read the rest of this post...

"A virtual tie" in Texas: CNN poll has Obama up 50 - 46 over Clinton

It's tight, tight, tight in Texas:

In the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Monday, 50 percent of likely Democratic primary voters said Obama is their choice for the party's nominee, while 46 percent backed Clinton.

But taking into account the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for Democratic respondents, the race is a virtual tie.

Clinton had a statistically insignificant 50 percent to 48 percent edge over Obama in last Monday's CNN/ORC poll in Texas.

This poll was conducted after the Texas debate last week.

Eight days to go. Read the rest of this post...

Big investor talks recession...ugly recession

Worse still, he compares the Fed mistakes to mistakes made in post-bubble Japan. Jim Rogers is not just any investor, but the co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros.

"They (the U.S. central bank) are printing money and are trying to prevent the recession -- they are putting on Band-Aids," he said ahead of an investor conference in Dublin.

Rogers said the central bank was making the "same mistakes" Japan did in the early 1990s before its credit-inflated bubble economy burst.

"The Japanese did it and the Japanese still have not recovered 18 years later," he said.

"As long as the (U.S.) central bank and the federal government keep making the mistakes, you will have a longer period of slowdown and it will be perhaps one of the worst recessions we have had in a long time in America," he said.

Read the rest of this post...

Nedra Pickler's respected GOP source? Guy who created anti-Hillary group entitled C.U.N.T. (not kidding)

And did you get the tag line? "Citizens United Not Timid (C.U.N.T.): To Educate the American People About What Hillary Really Is."

How could the Associated Press even interview this guy after he proved what a partisan, profane nut-job he is? Even more from TPM Muckraker. AP had to scrape pretty low to find a guy from C.U.N.T. to back-up more Swift Boat attacks on Democrats. You'd think something about the guy from C.U.N.T. being supportive of these attacks might just have set off a few warning bells for Pickler or AP? Maybe, just maybe, this wasn't a REAL news story? You think? Read the rest of this post...

Romney may rejoin the race

PLEASE! Read the rest of this post...

McCain's "potential headache from the FEC" -- it's potentially criminal

John McCain claims to be the champion of campaign finance reform. That's why his attempt to scam the campaign finance laws is an even more important story. The DNC filed its FEC complaint against McCain this morning. Violating the FEC's campaign spending limits could result in criminal penalties.

The right wingers never liked campaign finance anyway -- and it's one of the reasons so many conservatives disliked McCain. So it must be bittersweet for them that McCain has boxed himself into a corner on campaign finance. Even the conservative National Review has clued into McCain's "potential headache from the FEC":

The key graphs of the New York Sun's eye-opening story on John McCain potentially running into trouble with the FEC:

The case could have far-reaching implications for the fall campaign. A decision that forces Mr. McCain to remain in the public financing system for the primary or that finds him in violation of federal law could severely limit the amount of money he could spend in the six months leading up to the Republican nominating convention in late summer. The restriction would have the effect of giving the Democratic nominee a spending head start equal to tens of millions of dollars.

The situation is complicated by the current state of the FEC. Squabbling over presidential nominees between the Bush administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress has four of the six seats on the commission vacant. The panel therefore lacks the four commissioners required for a quorum and cannot rule definitively either on Mr. McCain's attempt to withdraw from the system or on the forthcoming DNC complaint against him.

McCain has no more cred on campaign finance. None. Read the rest of this post...

What have been your experiences with security at Hillary's and McCain's events?

We've written extensively about a seeming laxity of security at Obama's public events around the country and a reader suggested I ask for you personal feedback about what kind of security you've seen at Hillary's and McCain's public events over the past few months. Were everyone's bags searched, were no bags allowed, were there metal detectors, were they used, etc.? Feel free to weigh in in the comments, and thanks. Read the rest of this post...

Mark Penn's tangled corporate web: Clinton is a client; McCain is a client.

As has been widely reported, Hillary Clinton's top guru, Mark Penn, is leading the charge within the Clinton campaign to go aggressively negative against Obama. Besides the fact that Penn is the architect responsible for Hillary's presidential aspirations going from "inevitable" to being on life support, he is reportedly obsessed with destroying Obama. While it is understandable that Clinton's top adviser wants his client to win at all costs, going massively negative against Obama (or Hillary for that matter) risks damaging our candidate in the fall election against McCain. Unfortunately, this is something another "client" would welcome. That client is named John McCain.

Penn is the CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a DC public relations (PR) firm. Burson-Marsteller owns a subsidiary, BKSH. BKSH is run by Charlie Black. Black is a longtime Republican politico, and a top adviser for John McCain for President. And, as Think Progress notes, while Black is a volunteer on the McCain campaign, he views Mcain as his client and continues to take a paycheck from BKSH. JedReport dissected these relationships in a diary on DailyKos last night.

Much more after the jump...

And, Ari Berman wrote about this last spring:

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was a partner with Lee Atwater, the consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign for George H.W. Bush in 1988. In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets.

Black is only one cannon in B-M's Republican arsenal.

Penn works for Clinton.

Black works for McCain.

And Black works for Penn.

Keep this in mind as you read some of the guiding principles for Penn's and Black's firm, courtesy of the Burson-Marsteller website:

# We, the directors and employees of all companies in WPP recognize our obligations to all who have a stake in our success including shareowners, clients, employees, and suppliers;...

# We will not for personal or family gain directly or indirectly engage in any activity which competes with companies within WPP or with our obligations to any such company;

# We will not have any personal or family conflicts of interest within our businesses or with our suppliers or other third parties with whom we do business;

So, again, we have to ask: Why is Mark Penn on a mission to destroy Obama? It's clear that Penn benefits if Hillary wins -- she's his client, his firm's client. His company benefits if McCain wins -- he's the client of one of Penn's top employees. Penn has an obligation to his shareholders and clients. And his firm seems to have clients on both sides of the aisle, on both sides of this fight. If Obama wins the presidency, Penn gets nothing. He was helping the other guy, or gal. But if McCain wins, Penn's firm has one hell of a contact with the new president - heck, one of his top employees had the new president as a client and didn't even charge him! Is it a conflict of interest? Not with his clients. But how about with the Democratic party and our interests? Read the rest of this post...

Despite Fed rate cuts, interest rates remain unchanged

Surely you wouldn't expect banks to pay for their mistakes, would you? They won't hesitate to ruin your life but they never fail to pass on their problems to everyone else. When Bush and Congress talk about a bailout plan for Wall Street - and no matter what they say, it's a bailout - remember that the banks are going to squeeze every penny from both taxpayers and mortgage holders to recoup their losses. With analysts now predicting a total real estate decline of 20% from its peak, banks are looking everywhere for extra easy money. Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

One thing is already clear. The traditional media is back to its old tricks of regurgitating the GOP slurs. CNN and Nedra Pickler from the Associated Press are Exhibits A and B. Disgusting. We're going to have to fight back very hard. And, we will.

Get ready, it's going to be a bumpy ride. But, we're going to have fun -- and we're going to win. Read the rest of this post...

Worse than ever for women in Afghanistan

For a period of time, the Bush Administration promoted the war in Afghanistan as (among other things) a place where Western powers could promote better treatment for women. Visits by Laura Bush, in secure and remote bunkers far from the real world, highlighted the new Afghanistan where women were active participants in modern society. Whether there was any truth to those stories is hard to say and not even relevant considering how the forgotten country has drifted backwards in so many ways. When a country invades and occupies another country, it should be assumed that you accept responsibility for its people. The failing country has booming poppy crops, issuing death sentences for journalists and women are worse off today than even during the Taliban. We own this and it's shameful.

Grinding poverty and the escalating war is driving an increasing number of Afghan families to sell their daughters into forced marriages.

Girls as young as six are being married into a life of slavery and rape, often by multiple members of their new relatives. Banned from seeing their own parents or siblings, they are also prohibited from going to school. With little recognition of the illegality of the situation or any effective recourse, many of the victims are driven to self-immolation – burning themselves to death – or severe self-harm.

Read the rest of this post...

Up to $739 billion in mortgages are at “moderate to high risk” of default

But don't call it a bailout. John McCain can claim economic ignorance (and he's right) but it was the GOP who ushered in this era of laissez faire economics. This is precisely what he wants to do to the US health care system, as if this would somehow help. Now that the banks have lost billions, guess who is running to Congress, asking for help? Wall Street is sending hordes of lobbyists to set up a tax payer bailout to the industry. Wall Street got themselves into this problem, let them dig themselves out of it on their own dollar. Unless they want a loan at very advantageous rates to taxpayers they can go to hell. We can consider this a subprime loan and charge the banks accordingly. Even so, it's all just too risky.

A confidential proposal that Bank of America circulated to members of Congress this month provides a stunning glimpse of how quickly the industry has reversed its laissez-faire disdain for second-guessing by the government — now that it is in trouble.

The proposal warns that up to $739 billion in mortgages are at “moderate to high risk” of defaulting over the next five years and that millions of families could lose their homes.

To prevent that, Bank of America suggested creating a Federal Homeowner Preservation Corporation that would buy up billions of dollars in troubled mortgages at a deep discount, forgive debt above the current market value of the homes and use federal loan guarantees to refinance the borrowers at lower rates.

“We believe that any intervention by the federal government will be acceptable only if it is not perceived as a bailout of the bond market,” the financial institution noted.

Read the rest of this post...