Cheney says McCain's gas-tax-holiday idea won't work

Okay, so now I'm confused. Because Cheney is against it, does that make it good? Either way, it makes John McCain look pretty stupid. And it also suggests that there's no love lost between McCain and Cheney, if Cheney is now publicly undercutting the GOP nominee. Very weird thing for Cheney to do to McCain. Read the rest of this post...

Superdelegate Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) may wait 10 days to pick a team

Ten days? Yep.

Tom Fazzini, deputy press secretary for Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), said that “if the process fails to resolve itself, he will announce his position as a superdelegate by June 13.” Obama won Oregon easily last month.

It's people like Wyden who are responsible for the mess we're in. No backbone, so let the problem fester, and now we have both sides of the party hating each other. And what's Wyden's solution? Let it fester another ten days AFTER Obama gets the nomination, so that we can really guarantee a civil war breaks out in the party.

Don't get me wrong, Wyden is a nice guy and all. But his lack of backbone is another example of the larger spine-ectomy our party has suffered from for far too long. Read the rest of this post...

Ants

Okay, so this has nothing to do with politics, but it kind of disturbed me, so I thought I'd ask about it. In a nutshell, I was on the balcony watering the orchids a few hours ago, when I noticed I had a few ants. So I was looking at the ants and noticed that a large number of them were traveling in pairs. Almost connected head to tail. They didn't appear to be getting it on, but rather, this was the way they traveled. The thing is, I've never seen ants do this before. I've seen long trails of ants, sure. But just two ants connected - and there were numerous pairs of connected ants, so it wasn't just a fluke - that struck me as a bit odd. So I got out my camera and filmed it for you. If you really don't care, then overlook this post and I'm pretty sure we'll be ranting about Bill Clinton's latest outrage around 9 o'clock. But in the meantime, anybody know what the deal is with these ants?

Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING: Senator Byrd (D-WV) hospitalized

Lethargic, sluggish and with a fever, per Olbermann. This right after Cheney made an incest joke about West Virginia.

9:16PM Finally the news catches up. From The Hill:

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W. Va.) was admitted to the hospital for the third time this year on Monday night, this time for overnight observation after suffering a high fever.

Byrd, 90, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, was taken to a Virginia hospital in the early evening and will stay there overnight after feeling ill throughout the day, spokesman Jesse Jacobs said. Jacobs said Byrd had felt “lethargic and sluggish” throughout the day, but attended the lone Senate vote of the day, at 5:30 p.m. He was one of 14 senators to vote against debating a climate change bill.

Shortly thereafter, Byrd went home and reported the same symptoms to his caregiver. The caregiver discovered that Byrd had a fever and consulted the senator’s physician, who recommended a hospital visit, Jacobs said.

Byrd, who was elected in 1949 and now assumes the powerful Appropriations Committee chairmanship, was hospitalized briefly in February after a fall at his home and again in March for adverse reactions to medication.

Read the rest of this post...

Hillary is now rallying her major donors to help her stay in the race for a long, long time

Hillary is now trying to rally her major donors to help her stay in the race beyond this week (her campaign is talking about challenging Michigan now), and at the same time the donors are magically, on their very own (nudge nudge wink wink) demanding that Hillary stay in the race until the convention.

A Clinton donor tells me that on a conference call today with major fundraisers this afternoon, Harold Ickes told them Clinton isn't planning to drop out. He pressed donors to stay unified, and reviewed tactical options, including challenging the Michigan delegation.

State finance committees are also circulating letters to deliver to Clinton tomorrow in New York, and I've obtained a draft of the Illinois finance committee's letter, being circulated by a Clinton fundraising aide, Rafi Jafri, which stresses a fight until the convention, and a resolution in "August, and no earlier."

They, along with Hillary, are now claiming that Hillary has the lead in the popular vote, which is a lie. I personally like Ben Smith's take on this:

"The problem is that Clinton hasn't won the popular vote by any accepted measure, only by the one that tilts further her way. And superdelegates show no sign of accepting her count."

Unless the Democratic party leadership does something fast, we're going to lose the election in November because of this hateful woman. Read the rest of this post...

Top Hillary superdelegates go public: This better end soon, they say

The only reason top Hillary supporters would be going public like this is if they feared that Hillary plans to drag this campaign out a lot longer than this week.

First there's this that Joe found earlier today from Tom Vilsack, "a national co-chairman of Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign":

"It does appear to be pretty clear that Senator Obama is going to be the nominee. After Tuesday's contests, she needs to acknowledge that he's going to be the nominee and quickly get behind him."

What Vilsack did, in speaking out publicly against the woman whose campaign he co-chairs, was the political equivalent of a slap in the face. The only reason Vilsack would speak out is if he sees the writing on the wall and thinks Hillary doesn't. And, he doesn't think private chats with Hillary are getting anywhere - that she now needs to be publicly pushed into going away.

Then there are these 3 Hillary superdeleates in the LA Times:

"It would be most beneficial if we resolved this nomination sooner rather than later," said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a high-profile superdelegate who backs Clinton. "The more time we have to get through a general-election period and the more time we have to prepare in advance of the convention, the better."
....

"She'll do the right thing for America, and I don't think we're going to fight this at the convention," said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a top Clinton supporter and party superdelegate, speaking on CBS. "Because even were we to win it, unless it's going to change enough delegates for Sen. Clinton to get the nomination, then it would be a fight that would have no purpose."
....

Alice Huffman, a member of the rules panel and a superdelegate committed to Clinton, said she would not support an appeal if Obama had clearly won the delegate fight.

"What's the point for a challenge, if a challenge doesn't change the status of anything?" asked Huffman, the president of the California branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Read the rest of this post...

Nomination countdown -- 44 41.5 to go

6:32 p.m.: A Washington superdelegate endorses Obama -- 41.5 left. Also, Rep. Jim Clyburn will endorse Obama tomorrow.

4:16 p.m.: An email from the Obama campaign tells me they've picked up another Florida superdelegate with 1/2 vote. Delegates needed is down to 42.5.

Yet another UPDATE: With another Michigan super (1/2 vote) on board, Obama is 43 delegates away from securing the majority of 2,118.

UPDATED: Three more superdelegates have announced support for Obama this morning. Only 44 43.5 left to go. (I had to correct the post. The latest super is from Michigan so only counts for 1/2. Have to give a huge shout out to the writers at Democratic Convention Watch. Keeping track of this is not easy -- yet, they do it masterfully.)

We'll keep updating the tally over the next couple days as Obama approaches the magic number of 2,118.

Importantly, the unifying is beginning as evidenced Taegan Goddard's very interesting quote of the day from Tom Vilsack "a national co-chairman of Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign":

It does appear to be pretty clear that Senator Obama is going to be the nominee. After Tuesday's contests, she needs to acknowledge that he's going to be the nominee and quickly get behind him.

Read the rest of this post...

Possible McCain defense secretary says recognition of Israel was bad idea

Just in time for Israel's 60th birthday. Nice. Read the rest of this post...

Clinton campaign: Tuesday night will be the beginning of "the next phase of the campaign"

As I wrote earlier today, it's increasingly looking like Hillary has plans to keep her campaign going until the convention. Now her staff is hinting just that - that Tuesday night won't be the end, it will be the beginning! If Hillary won't agree that the first person to reach 2,118 is our nominee, then Harry Reid, Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi need to have another chat with a certain insane woman before all out war breaks out later this week. She really is just a breathtakingly horrible person.

From Ben Smith:

Ken Vogel reports from the Clinton bubble a Clinton spokesman is pushing back on the notion of a concession soon, something even many of her aides and top supporters now expect.

Hillary Clinton will not drop out of the presidential race Tuesday or in several days that follow, the spokesman,Mo Elleithee, said Monday afternoon.

"It's pretty clear that she's not conceding," Elleithee told reporters on Clinton's campaign plane en route from Rapid City, S.D. to Sioux City, Iowa.

Instead, Elleithee said Clinton would be "aggressively courting" superdelegates and "putting together the next phase of the campaign," which he said could include campaign events around the country.

More from ABC:

When asked why Clinton was spending tomorrow in New York at an event the campaign is calling a "victory party," Clinton’s spokesperson said, “it’s a good way to close out this phase of the campaign is come to New York bring all of her supporters together, have a big celebratory election night party as we move into the next phase of the campaign which is obviously the courting of these delegates.”

That would be the phase where what was left of the Clinton good name is utterly and completely destroyed by the two biggest narcissists our party has ever seen. Read the rest of this post...

Americans seeking fast cash as economy withers

The Republicans who created the mirage economy insist on saying everything is fine, that it's just the lefties who are complaining. Back in the real world those pesky facts just keep getting in the way of a good story. Credit card transactions are growing rapidly, reverse mortgages are hot, loans against retirement plans and life settlements paid early with pennies on the dollar are all experiencing rapid growth as real estate crumbles. Didn't the GOP and Wall Street tell us this also would be a soft landing? Read the rest of this post...

Those four delegates...

From Markos:

You guys have seen the latest Clinton craziness, right? The freaking out over the "four delegates" that were supposedly wrenched from their hands by the DNC's RBC committee this past Saturday. To hear them say it, Obama is evvvviiiilllll because he denied Clinton four delegates she "won" in Michigan's potemkin one-candidate "primary". Why couldn't have Obama been magnanimous and just given Clinton those extra four delegates? He's going to win anyway, right? Would the four delegates have made a difference?

Of course, the issue isn't the four delegates....

Had the DNC handed out delegates based on January's sham vote, it would've ratified the election as a legitimate one (as ended up happening with Florida, by the way). Hillary and her acolytes would've then had a greater claim to her Michigan "victory" of 328,309 votes to zero for Obama....

Clinton doesn't give a damn about those extra delegates. She wanted to ratify the Michigan election and claim that 328,309-vote advantage for her tally.

So when you see Clinton surrogates in a rage about those "four delegates", understand that their rage has nothing to do with four delegates. It has to do with the blow it dealt to their propaganda efforts.

Read the rest of this post...

Plagiarism on the NYT op ed page?

I'm sure this is just a whopping coincidence (major hat tip to Remember the Midwest blog for catching this). Both articles are about Obama supposedly not mentioning military service during a speech about national service. They both mention a recent squabble about veteran's benefits, Kristol's piece uses the title of the other piece as a regular phrase, not credited, and even the titles of the articles are similar.

RealClearPolitics, May 27, 2008, in an article ironically titled "Obama's sin of omission":

So I guess it's just me wondering -- how on earth do you give a speech on that topic and not mention our country's most widespread and important form of public service and sacrifice, military service?

Maybe Obama didn't want to go there because of the unfortunate political contrast between himself and John McCain when it comes to military service and knowledge, an unflattering comparison that left Obama on the short end of a recent political exchange over veterans' benefits.

Now here is NYT op ed columnist Bill Kristol, dated today June 2, in a piece entitled "What Obama left out":

More striking is Obama’s sin of omission. In the rest of the speech, he goes on to detail — at some length — the “so many ways to serve” that are available “at this defining moment in our history.” There’s the Peace Corps, there’s renewable energy, there’s education, there’s poverty — there are all kinds of causes you can take up “should you take the path of service.”

But there’s one obvious path of service Obama doesn’t recommend — or even mention: military service. He does mention war twice: “At a time of war, we need you to work for peace.” And, we face “big challenges like war and recession.” But there’s nothing about serving your country in uniform.

It can’t be that the possibility of military service as an admirable form of public service didn’t occur to Obama. Only the day before, Obama had been squabbling with John McCain about veterans’ benefits.

Talk about your sins of omission. Maybe the article should been titled "What Bill Kristol left out." Read the rest of this post...

I don't think Hillary is leaving the race any time soon

UPDATE: I hadn't read this Carpetbagger piece before I wrote and published mine, but I just did and it's pretty much the same analysis (damn you, Bill Kristol).

I have a theory about what's going to happen this week. Hillary will announce, perhaps as early as Tuesday night, or Wednesday, that she's "suspending" her campaign for the nomination. She will not "concede" the race, and she will probably not endorse Obama either. She will announce that she is suspending her campaign, and the media will buy this as "Hillary has conceded," when she will have done nothing of the sort.

By suspending, she leaves open the possibility that she will jump back in at any time before the August convention, and she will leave open the possibility that she will still try to poach Obama's superdelegates between now and the convention. Part of the way she'll get around this is by announcing that the superdelegates have only just been giving all the information they need to make up their minds. I mean, after all, she'll say, we only just had the last primaries on Tuesday. How can the superdelegates really make up their minds in only a few hours. They'll need a good few weeks, maybe even months, to really let all the information percolate in their brains.

Also, we'll probably watch another goal post be moved by the Clintons. "Obama doesn't need 2,118 delegates to be our nominee," Hillary will likely argue. "Obama needs 2,118 delegates on Thursday, August 28, 2008 when he officially becomes the nominee. How many delegates he has before that data is irrelevant since superdelegates can change their minds up until that date." So she'll effectively keep running until the end of August.

Now, I don't think she's decided yet if she's going to do this. But I think it's a 50-50 chance right now, as evidenced by what she's being saying over the past two days.

The Politico:

“I’m a day-to-day person,” she said, adding that she has “closed very strongly” and “dominated” Obama since February 20.

She said the campaign has been so intense, “I don’t think there’s been a lot of time for reflection.”

The end of voting will allow time for careful reflection about who would be the best candidate for the Democratic Party, she said.

“My political obituary has yet to be written,” she said. “It’s not over til it’s over.”

I.e., the superdelegates haven't had enough time yet to reflect about who is better, so she's going to generously give them the time they need, at least a few more weeks. I mean, after all this time who could argue about a few more weeks (she'll say).

MSNBC's First Read:

During her victory speech after the Puerto Rico primary, which she is on her way to winning likely by a two-to-one margin, Ricky Martin music blaring at the introduction and afterward, Clinton showed no sign of pulling out of this race any time soon....

“Let’s keep fighting,” she concluded. “Let’s keep fighting. Let's keep fighting. Let's keep fighting.”

NYT:

In the interview, Mrs. Clinton resisted the push of some Democratic leaders — among them, Howard Dean, the party chairman, and Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker — for superdelegates to quickly chose sides as soon as the voting is over Tuesday. “I know that people are hopeful that we get a nominee, and we will,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s as important to do it fast as it is to do it well.”

So choosing this week would being doing it too fast? That line was cute when she first used it a month or so ago. But claiming that this week is too fast is a horrifying insight into what makes this woman tick.

Again, this isn't set in stone. But Hillary and her people are seriously considering ways of dragging this race out even longer. I don't think in a million years she's going to "concede" this week. Now, why does that matter? Because if she doesn't concede, her fans and her donors aren't going to get over the fact that she lost. They're going to continue hoping for a Hillary victory, and they're not going to heal and come around to supporting Obama. Imagine a parent has been told that there's still hope that their kidnapped child will be found. Does that parent: A) Keep hope alive; or B) Agree with the guy telling them that their kid is lost forever? No one gives up if their number one hero tells them there is still hope.

The only remaining question is whether the superdelegates, and our party's leadership, will fully comprehend what's behind the parsing that Hillary is going to be doing this week. Will they believe that she's, for all intents and purposes, dropped out of the race, or will they realize that she's done nothing of the sort?

And you know what they say about Bobby Kennedy... Read the rest of this post...

Hillary's latest lie: I've won more states than Obama... if you don't count 38 of the 50 states

The NYT today prints Hillary's latest lie, unquestioned. This one is quite likely her biggest lie to date:

“I’ve been closing very strongly since Feb. 20,” she said, referring to the day after Mr. Obama won Hawaii and Wisconsin. “I have won more votes and won more states than Senator Obama. All the independent analyses break in my direction. A lot of the key states that we have to win, I win those states.”

Put aside for a moment the "more votes" argument, where Hillary doesn't count 15 states (so she's won more votes in 35 states - uh, thats nice.) Hillary is now claiming that she's won more states than Obama. Uh, no. Not by a mile.

Obama: 33 states won

Clinton: 19 states won

(Note: some states have primaries and caucuses so the total is more than 50.)

Now, what Hillary is probably REALLY claiming is that she has won more states SINCE FEBRUARY 20. Uh, maybe. And so what? How do you magically choose February 20th as the day after which primaries and caucuses count, but any that happened before that date don't count? How - because only after February 19 does Hillary win more states. Now how many states do you think Hillary has thrown out of her calculations because their primaries and caucuses happened before? 38 states. That's 76% of the states not counted. Yes, Hillary's argument is that if you throw out the results in 38 of the 50 states, then she wins more states than Obama. Here are the 38 states that Hillary now says don't count:

Iowa caucuses
New Hampshire primary
Michigan primary
Nevada caucuses
South Carolina primary
Florida primary
Alabama primary
Alaska caucuses
Arizona primary
Arkansas primary
California primary
Colorado caucuses
Connecticut primary
Delaware primary
Georgia primary
Idaho caucuses
Illinois primary
Kansas caucuses
Massachusetts primary
Minnesota caucuses
Missouri primary
New Jersey primary
New Mexico primary
New York primary
North Dakota caucuses
Oklahoma primary
Tennessee primary
Utah primary
Louisiana primary
Nebraska caucuses
Washington caucuses
Maine caucuses
D.C. primary (not a state, but whatever)
Maryland primary
Virginia primary
Hawaii caucuses
Wisconsin primary
Ohio primary

So, under Hillary's absurd math you only count the last 24% of the game, and ignore the first 76%. Good luck with that math in November.

"Dear Electoral College, I know I lost to John McCain by over 100 electoral votes, but if you only count the electoral votes in the following 12 states, I really won!" - Love, Hillary

UPDATE: I just tallied the 14 races held after February 20th, and in fact Hillary won 8 and Obama won 6. Yep, that's Hillary's huge mandate for changing the minds of the superdelegates, her 8 victories to his 6 victories. And if you count Obama's expected wins tomorrow in South Dakota and Montana, then they'd be tied, 8-8. Read the rest of this post...

Since folks have been asking... here is how Hillary calculates having "won" the popular vote

Hillary is still putting out the lie that she has more votes than Obama nationwide. She has achieved this magical "feat" by not counting votes in the following 15 or so states:

Alaska
Colorado
Hawaii
Idaho
Iowa
Kansas
Maine
Minnesota
Nebraska
Nevada
North Dakota
Texas (Caucus only)
Washington
Wyoming

ANY popular votes for Obama in Michigan

So much for every vote counting. So, yes Virginia, if you pretend America is a country made up of 35 states instead of 50 states, then Hillary wins! But I have on better. If you pretend that America is a country of just one state, Michigan, and pretend that no one in that state would have ever voted for Obama anyway, then Hillary actually got EVERY vote in America!!!!

Tagean Goddard has more on Hillary's fuzzy math. Read the rest of this post...

The pressure builds on Karl Rove

Karl Rove loves to talk. He wants everyone to know he's the smartest political mastermind ever. Rove needs to talk to Congress -- under oath:

The House Judiciary Committee has prepared a report on the Siegelman case, and several other questionable prosecutions. Ms. Simpson told the committee staff under oath that Rob Riley — the son of Alabama’s Republican governor, Bob Riley — told her that his father and Mr. Canary discussed the Siegelman case with Mr. Rove. She said the younger Mr. Riley also told her that Mr. Rove had spoken to the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section about getting Mr. Siegelman indicted.

If these charges are true, they suggest that the justice system was turned into a partisan tool, and that Mr. Siegelman’s freedom may have been taken away because of his political allegiances.

Mr. Rove has already defied a Senate subpoena on the issue of politicized prosecutions, claiming executive privilege, and he seems intent on defying the House’s subpoena. His claim of executive privilege is not only weak; it is shamefully cynical.

If he was drumming up political prosecutions in the Justice Department, and talking about it with operatives in Alabama, those conversations are not privileged. And if there is any privilege to be protected — such as a conversation with the president that did not involve illegality — he would still need to show up in Congress and plead the privilege to specific questions.

It is time for Michael Mukasey, the attorney general, to stand up for justice by enforcing Congress’s subpoenas. If he will not do that, Congress must ensure that its investigative authority is not thwarted.

Mr. Rove seems willing to talk about this case everywhere except where he is required to: in Congress, in public, under oath. The American people, and Mr. Siegelman, are counting on Congress to find out the truth.

Karl should be pontificating the elections from a jail cell. But, any media type who interviews Rove from here on out better drill down down on the Siegelman and U.S. Attorneys scandals. Rove isn't a fellow pundit. He's the subject of a congressional investigation -- for possible criminal behavior. That's what makes Rove newsworthy these days. Not his political predictions. Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The breaking news this morning is that Senator Kennedy will undergo surgery today for his brain tumor:

In a statement released at shortly before 6:30 a.m., Kennedy said he would be operated on by Dr. Allan Friedman at the Duke University Medical Center and expects to recuperate there for about a week.

In the weeks and months after the surgery, Kennedy will begin a regimen of radiation and chemotherapy at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, according to the statement.

Kennedy, in a brief but upbeat statement, signaled that he would wait until all treatments were concluded before returning to Washington and the floor of the Senate.

"After completing treatment, I look forward to returning to the United States Senate and to doing everything I can to help elect Barack Obama as our next president," he said in the statement.

We look forward to that, too. Read the rest of this post...

Zimbabwe activists tortured and killed ahead of election

There is no reason to think Robert Mugabe is going to give up power without a bloody fight. Compare this to Iraq, where they are rolling in petro-dollars and US taxpayer dollars and yet, nobody really cares about democracy. Iraqi soldiers abandon their position, money constantly disappears and nobody cares much about democracy other than repeating a few words to the US in order to keep the money flowing. Meanwhile, the people of Zimbabwe are actually risking their lives to promote democracy with very little help from the outside world. To hell with Iraq, we ought to support people like this who give a damn. Read the rest of this post...

Hurricane season officially starts

As if we needed one more thing to push oil prices higher. Read the rest of this post...