Archive for March, 2008

Hillary Clinton And Richard Mellon Scaife, Together Again

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Billary, Hillary, History, Pennsylvania

If you don’t know who Scaife is, The Corner has some background… In this picture, she is seen talking to none other than Richard Mellon Scaife, the owner of the paper and the man who once said that the death of Vincent Foster was the “Rosetta stone” of the Bill Clinton administration. (He also funded [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 6 Comments »

Wall Street To Write Down $460 Billion In Losses

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, Money, WTF?

Yeah, sure, deregulation works great… From Bloomberg: March 25 (Bloomberg) — Wall Street banks, brokerages and hedge funds may report $460 billion in credit losses from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, or almost four times the amount already disclosed, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Profits will continue to wane, other analysts said. [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 10 Comments »

Clinton Will Release Tax Returns “Within The Next Week?”

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary, Taxes

It’s not necessarily a promise, but at least it’s sooner than 3 days before the Pennsylvania primary. From CNN: (CNN) — Barack Obama and his wife released their tax returns from 2000 to 2006 on his campaign Web site Tuesday, and the Illinois senator challenged Sen. Hillary Clinton to release hers. Later, Clinton said she [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 2 Comments »

Poll: Hillary Up By 10 In Pennsylvania

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Hillary, Pennsylvania, Polls

Obama has closed the gap from 13% since last week’s poll, but Hill still has an impressive lead in the Keystone State. From Rasmussen: The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in Pennsylvania shows Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama 49% to 39%. That’s little changed from earlier in the month when Clinton led 51% to 38%. [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 7 Comments »

If The Site Is Acting Weird For You…

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Blogging, Technology

…it’s probably because we’re on the front page of Reddit.com in the #1 position. Good news for the traffic, but bad news for site performance. In fact, I just got off the phone with our hosting service and we’re literally getting about 40 hits a second. Crazy. In any event, I had to upgrade my [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 1 Comment »

Obama, Progressive Champion. Maybe.

By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Barack, Liberalism

The liberal journal The Nation has endorsed Barack Obama, proclaiming him the great hope of the progressive movement. The journal spares few superlatives in their praise, envisioning a golden age for their ideology. But after lauding Obama for his natural leadership (and for having the good sense to be of multi-racial and multi-national origin) they [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 1 Comment »

Hillary’s Team Demands Obama Release His Tax Returns

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Hillary, Money, Taxes, Transparency

And two minutes later he does! This is pretty funny. Hillary spokesperson Phil Singer blasted out an email at 11:23 insisting that Obama release his tax returns for back years, Exactly two minutes later, at 11:25, Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor emailed out word that Obama had posted his tax returns for 2000-2006 on his campaign [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 14 Comments »

Poll: Obama Up Big In North Carolina, Race Speech Helping?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Hillary, North Carolina, Polls

Public Policy Polling has the numbers, and it looks like Obama has gained considerable ground since last week’s race speech. So while it may not be playing in some corners or the country, in others it’s turning out to be box office gold. Last week the numbers looked like this: Obama: 44% Clinton: 43% Today? [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 5 Comments »

Hillary Talks Wright Controversy/Bosnia

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Bosnia, Hillary, History, Race, Religion

This is absolutely fair… “He would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said. “You don’t choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend.” “You know, I spoke out against Don Imus (who was fired from his radio and television shows after making racially insensitive remarks), saying that hate speech was unacceptable [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 8 Comments »

Obama’s Campaign Embodies Public Financing

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Hillary, McCain, Money, Republicans

Fair warning, this is from an Obama campaign email, but I thought the difference in contribution amount is striking… In February alone, more than 94% of our donors gave in amounts of $200 or less. Meanwhile, campaign finance reports show that donations of $200 or less make up just 13% of Senator McCain’s total campaign [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 2 Comments »

4 Million Dems Registered In Pennsylvania

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Democrats, Hillary, McCain, Pennsylvania, Polls, Republicans

Encouraging news for Hillary? She’s up by at least 12 points in the latest poll I’ve seen, so she has to be happy with these registration numbers. Still, there’s plenty of time between now and the April 22. From AP: The figures, which showed modest declines in the ranks of Republicans and independents, reflected intense [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 1 Comment »

Crude Exploitation of Troop Deaths

By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Iraq

I shouldn’t link to this image because it is exploitative. But I do so anyway because I have a need to chastise those who created it and are using it for political gain. The image (which I will not reproduce here) is made up of the photographs of the 4,000 American troops lost in Iraq. [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| 5 Comments »

Al-Sadar Causing Problems Again

By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Iraq

The decline in Iraqi violence over the last half year can be partially if not greatly attributed to the Iraqi militia cease-fire. Now the situation is looking precarious. After a crackdown on militia in Basra this week, Shiite Cleric Moqtada al-Sadar is urging civil disobedience beginning with sit-ins, followed by civil revolt, if necessary, and [...]

March 25th, 2008 | Permalink| No Comments »

CBS Remembers Hillary’s Bosnia Trip Differently Too

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Bosnia, Hillary, Video

No sniper fire. No running to cars. Just a pretty laid back trip. Still, the Clinton camp has to be wincing about this… Here’s what she had to say about it today to an editorial board… “Now let me tell you what I can remember, OK — because what I was told was that we [...]

March 24th, 2008 | Permalink| 2 Comments »

Waiting For 5,000

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Bush, Democrats, History, Iraq, McCain, Military, Money, Republicans, The War On Terrorism

3,232. 3,547. 3,689. Anybody remember these numbers? I don’t, and for that I’m a bit ashamed. But 4,000, well, that one seems to give us pause. For some reason the sight of three zeroes makes us turn our necks long enough to pay attention, ask more questions and continue to find few real answers. So [...]

March 24th, 2008 | Permalink| 22 Comments »

The New, New, New Metric For Hillary Victory

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary, History

You ready for this one? Because it’s really good. Okay, here we go… Superdelegates shouldn’t make up their mind because of pledged delegates. They should make up their mind based on how many electoral college votes the states each candidate has won. That coming from the man who wants to be Hillary’s VP, Evan Bayh. [...]

March 24th, 2008 | Permalink| 28 Comments »

Olympic Protest

By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in China, Sports

The lighting of the Olympic flame in Greece was disrupted today by human rights protestors. We can only hope to see more peaceful demonstrations against China as the torch travels to Beijing. If the Chinese are going to use the games as an opportunity to present themselves as a global power, the rest of us [...]

March 24th, 2008 | Permalink| 3 Comments »

Rebate Still a Bad Idea

By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Congress, Economy

Like everyone else, I’m not going to turn down my tax refund that will arrive this May. But that doesn’t mean I think the giveaway is a good idea. Like most economists, former Reagan and Bush I official Bruce Bartlett agrees. Writing in The New York Times, he offers a more prudent plan: We need [...]

March 24th, 2008 | Permalink| 4 Comments »

A Superdelegate Pre-Convention Convention?

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary, Super Delegates!!!

From former governor of Tennessee Philip Bredesen comes this intriguing idea for superdelegates like himself: Here’s what our party should do: schedule a superdelegate primary. In early June, after the final primaries, the Democratic National Committee should call together our superdelegates in a public caucus. Of the 795 superdelegates, over 40 percent have not announced [...]

March 23rd, 2008 | Permalink| 4 Comments »

Clinton Speechwriter Backs Hillary’s Bosnia Story…Sort Of

By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Bosnia, Hillary, History

The Washington Post fact-checked the initial story, gave it 4 Pinocchios and called it a “whopper”…which is just a nice way of saying it’s a lie. Now they’ve added an update from a current Clinton speechwriter who was on the trip with her. Here’s the account: Lissa Muscatine, who served as Hilary Clinton’s chief speechwriter [...]

March 23rd, 2008 | Permalink| 1 Comment »