Goes to Lynn Sweet!
Congrats!

And small businesses are feeling the heat. To me, that’s a big deal because while they’re spending untold millions on TV ads, they can’t pay the little guys and gals? Come on…
From Politico:
A pair of Ohio companies owed more than $25,000 by Clinton for staging events for her campaign are warning others in the tight-knit [...]

This is good news. Seems the combined Iraqi and US military action agaisnt the Mehdi Army in Basra has worked. At least for now.
Given that the Iraqis did most of the work with the U.S. only supplying air and tactical support, perhaps the Iraqi government is getting closer to being able to manage their own [...]

Among the unplanned and unintended consequences of the incompetent prosecution of the war in Iraq by this administration – and they are legion – is the elevation of Moqtada al-Sadr from a low-level Baghdad cleric and neighborhood thug, to a major player in Iraqi politics, an actor on the world stage, and potential future leader of Iraq. Bush may not like al-Sadr, but no one has had more to do with the meteoric rise in popularity and power of Moqtada al-Sadr than George W. Bush and his administration.

Germany itself isn’t going to boycott the entire thing, but she won’t be showing up.
And she’s not the only one…
The disclosure that Germany is to stay away from the games’ opening ceremonies in August could encourage President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to join in a gesture of defiance and complicate Gordon Brown’s determination to attend [...]

Two days in a row, Obama has stayed at 50%.

Here’s more…
The last time Obama sustained a significant lead over Clinton for more than one day was in late February and early March, just before Clinton won the Ohio Democratic primary and regained her footing in the race.
This once again points to the Wright controversy waning [...]

During this political lull between primaries, the one story that keeps coming back around like a bad cold is the notion that an extended primary race is bad for the Democrats.
I fully believe this story is being pushed by Barack Obama’s people because only they have something to lose by a prolonged campaign. They’d much [...]

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has proposed a series of regulatory reforms focused on lessoning future market turmoil and preventing crises like the current one. The effect would be to make the Federal Reserve far more powerful, giving it regulatory control over all financial institutions that operate with government guarantees including the insurance industry. The plan [...]

ARG has the numbers from before…
Mar 7-8
Clinton: 52%
Obama: 41%
Other: 1%
Undecided: 6%
And after…
Mar 26-27
Clinton: 51%
Obama: 39%
Other: 2%
Undecided: 8%
Also, here’s the trend graph from Pollster:

Long story short, there’s not a ton of change here. Not sure what that means right now. I can see this as good for Clinton, but I also think the Wright controversy would [...]

Well, this is interesting:
The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll shows 72% of those surveyed say voters are ready to elect a qualified black candidate, 18% say they’re not. Meanwhile, 71% say Americans are ready to vote for a woman, 20% say they’re not. But only 61% say the voters are prepared to vote for a [...]

Big news today from the rolling poll…
Obama’s current 8-point advantage ties his largest lead of the Gallup Poll Daily tracking program, along with a 50% to 42% showing in Feb. 28-March 1 polling. Obama clearly has weathered the Wright storm, while the dark clouds have shifted to Clinton over whether she has exaggerated her foreign [...]

From TPM:
In other encouraging news, Iraqi police in Baghdad are apparently deserting en masse to the Mahdi Army, thus leaving city police checkpoints to be manned by Iraqi Army soldiers, who are conveniently available because the US military is getting pulled in to take over the fight with the Mahdi Army.
Once again, if we give [...]

“Black Americans were a founding population. Africans and Europeans came here and founded this country together — Europeans by choice and Africans in chains. That’s not a very pretty reality of our founding. That particular birth defect makes it hard for us to confront it, hard for us to talk about it, and hard for [...]

Florida Senator Bill Nelson plans to introduce a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college and replace it with a straight-up popular vote. I guess Nelson is so incensed over the primary system that he’s focusing his disgust on the other election system that relies on dubious apportionment of votes and a system of delegates [...]

Here he is on CBS this morning…

An aide clarified his statements by saying what he really meant was that he wants this wrapped up before the convention. But hasn’t Hillary been very vocally talking about taking this fight to the credentials committee?
Here’s the thing…she knows she can’t win and my guess is that she’s drawing [...]

Pretty big news here, and points to three things: 1) more momentum for Obama, 2) he has effectively moved past the Wright controversy and 3) he just picked up another superdelegate.
From Philly.com:
Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey plans to endorse Sen. Barack Obama for president today in Pittsburgh, sending a message both to the state’s primary voters [...]

For citizens of Iran, travel outside the country is very rare.
LifeGoesOnInTehran.com is a side-scrolling photo essay that chronicles the trip of a young Iranian guy and his cousin.
Here’s how the trips starts out…
It is extremely difficult for a single Iranian man in his twenties to obtain a visa to visit countries in the West. So [...]

So says CNN’s Michael Ware:
“Al-Sadr is involved in a very complicated relationship with the Iranians,” said CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware. “The Iranians do provide funding and support for his militia, yet at the same time they’re trying to rein him in and get him to adopt a certain political agenda, which from time to [...]

From ABC:
“Right now, among all the primary states, believe it or not, Hillary’s only 16 votes behind in pledged delegates,” said Bill Clinton, “and she’s gonna wind up with the lead in the popular vote in the primary states. She’s gonna wind up with the lead in the delegates [from primary states].”
“It’s the caucuses that [...]