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It is hard to think of a more cynical and contemptuous political act this year than John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Having served as governor of Alaska for less than two years -- and as mayor of a small town before that -- her qualifications for national office are minimal. Palin is the epitome of tokenism, exactly what conservative Republicans have always claimed to scorn, until today, as the politics of quotas and political correctness. Even Rush Limbaugh is a feminazi now (at least until Election Day). But if Palin's résumé is limited, to...

James Carville isn't happy with the pace of his party's convention and questions why his party isn't fighting harder. Carville, a CNN contributor and political adviser for former President Bill Clinton, appeared on CNN's August 26 "American Morning" and called the first night of the Democratic Party "wasted." CARVILLE: "[The Ted Kennedy speech] was a great moment, absolutely. But other stuff was wasted. There was no message that came out of here. Look, this is the fifth night in a row that we've had a Democratic convention since George W. Bush, the most disastrous, incompetent and corrupt administration we've had...

CongressNow: Possibilities Abound for Obama Cabinet August 26, 2008 By Louis Jacobson CongressNow Staff With Democrats having been out of the White House for eight years, there is no shortage of Cabinet-ready personnel for a President Barack Obama to choose from. Here are some names being floated for domestic Cabinet appointments. National security and economic posts are covered in other articles in this series. Attorney General. With revelations of an affair presumably taking widely touted former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) out of the picture, the AG landscape is wide open. Eric Holder Jr., a member of Obama’s vice presidential vetting...

Two polls separate polls show a substantial number of Hillary Clinton’s supporters are considering voting for a Republican president, rather than Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in November. A USA TODAY/Gallup poll conducted last Thursday-Sunday found 23 percent of Clinton’s supporters said they may vote for GOP presidential candidate John McCain in November. 47 percent said they were “solidly” Obama. A NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, released late last week, showed similar results. According to their poll 21 percent of Clinton’s supporters are planning to vote for McCain and 27 percent are undecided. 52 percent of the Clinton supporters polled said...

Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

Hillary Clinton supporters will march through Denver during the Democratic National Convention to show appreciation for the New York senator's historic primary run and urge the party to place her name in nomination.

Remember the American Dream? It had a roof on top. A door to happiness in its belly. And in some cases, a white-picket fence around its edges. Now homeownership and all its once-cherry-on-top privileges are on blue-light special: Bargain-basement dreams are in danger of turning into nightmares for millions of Americans, and it shows no sign of ending soon.

From the Maha - Guess who's been involved intimately with Fannie Mae? Does the name Jamie Gorelick ring a bell? This woman is everywhere, and Jamie Gorelick got a 26 million payout when she left the place. Jamie Gorelick got 26 million to leave, one of Clinton's guys, Franklin Raines, Franklin Raines, he was kicked out after corrupting the place. He left shortly before he was taking it in the shorts, but he got out of there with no penalty whatsoever. What is it with these Clinton people? This is why we don't get any tell-all books on the Clinton...

ON May 23, as a jury in Houston deliberated the case against top Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, a little-known regulatory agency in Washington, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), released a study with the dryly bureaucratic title "Report of the Special Examination of Fannie Mae." The document received far less attention than the news from Enron, but its conclusions were stunning. In meticulous detail, it outlined a culture of corruption at the Federal National Mortgage Association--better known as Fannie Mae--that rivals the most serious corporate scandals in recent years. In this case, however, the main...

Former President Clinton lost the codes to nuclear war the day the Monica Lewinsky affair broke, was MIA in the fall of 1998 when a decision was needed on the killing of Osama bin Laden, and was "too busy watching a golf match" to OK a 1996 bombing mission in Iraq, says a blockbuster new book by Clinton's former military aide. Lt. Col. Robert Patterson, who carried the nuclear "football" from May 1996 to May 1998, crosses a line no other "mil aide" has before in condemning his commander in chief in Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How...

ABC News' Ed O'Keefe Reports: Perhaps there will be a Madame President Clinton after all. No, not Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. How about former first daughter and active campaigner Chelsea Clinton? "If you asked me (if Chelsea would run for office) before Iowa, I would have said, 'No way. She is too allergic to anything we do.' But she is really good at it," former President Bill Clinton tells PEOPLE magazine in their latest issue, hitting newsstands Friday. In the PEOPLE exclusive, Clinton called his daughter's "emergence" the "second best thing" of the campaign, after his wife's "ability to endure...

The report, in Spanish, basically states that Her Excellency will be traveling to the Island soon, prior to their June 1st primary (63 delegates at stake).

WARREN, Mich (Reuters) - Three former chairmen of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday, bolstering the Illinois senator's economic credentials and bipartisan appeal as he closes in on his party's nomination. Former SEC head William Donaldson, who was appointed by Republican President George W. Bush, joined Arthur Levitt and David Ruder in backing Obama, who leads rival Hillary Clinton in the number of delegates necessary to become the Democratic White House nominee. Levitt was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, while Ruder was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan, a...

On Today’s Show... Hillary says Rush launched Operation Chaos because he's "always had a crush on me." This explains why Bill Clinton hit on Rush's date! (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen Here) » Watch the Video: Rush Explains Crush-Gate to Martha MacCallum on Fox News Operation Chaos stumps the Drive-By Media. They know it's a factor, but they don't want to give Rush any credit. If it wasn't a factor, would everyone from the NY Times to the cable news shows be talking about it? (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen Here) » Suit Up at the EIB Store: Operation Chaos T-shirts,...

Barack Obama made an impassioned appeal to voters last night to end Hillary Clinton's dreams of another comeback in the race for the White House. The Illinois senator told Democrat voters heading to the polls today in Indiana and North Carolina: "I need help." With less than a month to go before the state-by-state vote ends, the Obama camp is desperate to finish off Mrs Clinton's campaign to become the Democrat's presidential nominee. Barack Obama is desperate to beat Hillary Clinton, so much so that he is counting on support from celebrities including Tom Hanks. Mr Obama, 46, also broke...

RUSH: A TV station in Indianapolis thinks they caused the operational pause in Operation Chaos. WISH-TV, the anchor Eric Halvorson and his report last night on Operation Chaos. HALVORSON: Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called for a pause in what he calls Operation Chaos. It's a call to conservatives to vote in Democratic primaries to extend the nomination battle. Yesterday, 24 Hour News 8 Jim Shella reported on official reactions to Operation Chaos here, a story Limbaugh referenced on the air today. RUSH: So they're implying, ladies and gentlemen, that Operation Chaos, the operational pause was due to their...

The Massachusetts Democratic primary, along with nearly two dozen other primaries and caucuses, was held on Feb. 5. Hillary Clinton won it by 15 points, one of her best showings anywhere this year, and Michael Dukakis voted in it—but he won’t say for whom. [SNIP] Mr. Dukakis has maintained an adamantly neutral public stance throughout the campaign, hoping instead to sell both candidates and their campaigns on the need for assembling a massive grassroots organizing effort—a captain and six block leaders in all 200,000 precincts in the country—for the fall. But he also said that Barack Obama will probably be...

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright couldn't have done more damage to Barack Obama's campaign if he had tried. And you have to wonder if that's just what one friend of Wright wanted. Shortly before he rose to deliver his rambling, angry, sarcastic remarks at the National Press Club Monday, Wright sat next to, and chatted with, Barbara Reynolds. A former editorial board member at USA Today, she runs something called Reynolds News Services and teaches ministry at the Howard University School of Divinity. (She is an ordained minister). It also turns out that Reynolds - introduced Monday as a member of...

If history repeats, the loser of this year’s presidential election will blame the news media. Richard Nixon, in the wake of his loss in the 1962 California gubernatorial race, bitterly taunted reporters, telling them, “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” (Turned out he was wrong on that point.) Barbara Bush also had some choice words about the press when her husband, President George H.W. Bush, lost his reelection bid in 1992. The media could be even a larger target this year because of the influence of blogs and talking heads...

RUSH: Let's go to this ad, ladies and gentlemen, the North Carolina Republican Party TV ad. An unidentified female TV announcer you'll hear and then the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and the North Carolina Republican Party chairman Linda Daves. FEMALE ANNOUNCER: For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew listening to his pastor. WRIGHT: And then wants us to sing God Bless America? No, no, no! Not God Bless America. God (bleep) America. FEMALE ANNOUNCER: Now, Bev Perdue and Richard Moore endorse Barack Obama. They should know better. He's just too extreme for North Carolina. DAVES: The North Carolina Republican...

LOS ANGELES — I hate pundits who remind you when they were right, and conveniently forget all the times we’re wrong. Half the fun of being a pundit is that it really doesn’t matter; that unlike the situation when you’re running a campaign, our mistakes don’t count for anything but amusement. Even so, when I turned my computer on at 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday and saw, on my favorite such source, the Primary Day Drudge report, the report that the exits were closer than expected, I couldn’t help but start laughing. My students thought, probably not for the first...

In last week's Philadelphia debate, Hillary Clinton said she would commit the United States to a retaliatory attack against Iran, presumably with nuclear weapons, if it dropped the bomb on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, or Kuwait. Asked if "it should be U.S. policy now to treat an Iranian attack on Israel as if it were an attack against the United States," Clinton astonishingly responded that she'd use American nukes not just to defend Israel, our traditional strategic ally, but also other neighboring states such as the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait from an Iranian nuclear attack. Barack Obama's...

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton continued to pull away from rival Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois as the campaigning in Pennsylvania ended and voters prepared to cast ballots Tuesday, the latest Newsmax/Zogby daily telephone tracking poll shows. Clinton now leads Obama, 51% to 41%, having gained three points over the past 24 hours as Obama lost one point, pushing her beyond the poll’s margin of error to create a statistically significant lead for the first time in the Pennsylvania daily tracking poll. Meanwhile, 6% remained undecided and another 3% said they preferred someone else in the two-day tracking poll....

RUSH: Do you remember the genesis of MoveOn.org? The whole point of MoveOn.org, it was a Clinton front group. "Move on," meant, "Can't we move on from the impeachment? Can't we move on from all of these scandals? Can't we move on from all of these little Chihuahuas yapping at the heels of the Clintons? Can't we just move on?" With that in mind, in February 2008 in a closed door fundraiser (phone quality here), this is Mrs. Clinton talking about MoveOn.org. HILLARY: We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic...

This time, Robert Reich: So what’s changed? I asked Reich. “I saw the ads” — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama’s bitter/cling comments a week ago — “and I was appalled, frankly. I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics. And also of the politics of distraction, of gotcha politics. It’s the worst of all worlds. We have three terrible traditions that we’ve developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and...

If the Democratic presidential race were a poker game, by now you'd have to suspect that Barack Obama's campaign is dealing from the bottom of the deck: Rarely a day goes by when it doesn't slap another ace down on the table. The aces in this (possibly strained) metaphor are endorsements, and it often seems as if the Obama operation has an inexhaustible supply at its disposal. In the past week alone, it has announced the support of congressmen from North Carolina and Indiana; the Utah state party chair; the Oklahoma state party's chief fundraiser; 25 South Dakota state legislators;...

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — He stands behind her, guarded and on the lookout. His head is turning left, then right, then left again, the way one watches a tennis match. Philippe Reines could be mistaken for a Secret Service agent for Chelsea Clinton, the former first daughter who is anxious to regain that title. Now, as a crowd surrounds the youngest Clinton at a Marshall University campaign stop, Reines is on the lookout for hangers-on, swooning frat boys and, mostly, looming trouble in the form of microphones, cameras and notepads. When sharp-elbowed television reporters manage to slip through the crowd and...

It was one of those typical questions from a reporter gaggle on Capitol Hill: Does Harry Reid think the protracted nomination fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will harm the party? Reid didn't miss a beat. "It makes me bitter," he deadpanned. Reid has such a dry humor that you actually have to pause and look at him to make sure he's not being serious when he's attempting comedy. But his usual grimace in front of reporters quickly turned to a grin as he capitalized on the now infamous "bitter" comment made by Obama at a San Francisco area...

Former President Carter and Al Gore have discussed plans to tell Hillary Rodham Clinton that she must abandon her presidential bid, for the sake of the Democratic Party. "They're in discussions," a source close to Carter told the Scotland on Sunday newspaper. "Carter has been talking to Gore. They will act, possibly together, or in sequence." The newspaper said the message will be delivered — it's just a matter of when. Barack Obama leads Clinton in the race for pledged delegates, and political experts say its nearly impossible for her to catch. But she retains a lead among superdelegates, and...

Former US president Bill Clinton said Friday he has been ordered to hold his tongue by his wife Hillary for reviving an embarrassing story about her trip to Bosnia in 1996 while out campaigning. "Hillary called me and said 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it.' I said, 'Yes ma'am," the grinning ex-president said during a campaign stop in Indiana, according to television pictures. A series of gaffes have made Bill Clinton somewhat of a liability in his wife's campaign for the Democratic White House nomination. And he put his foot in it again Thursday by...

This is hilarious... http://www.taylormarsh.com/archives_view.php?id=27389 Donna Brazile is for Obama guest post by Masslib ME: Yes, because she doesn't want any one to be offended. She's a buck stops here person. I think that's an admirable quality. DB: Blacks have been deeply wounded by the duplicity of the Clintons . Now, you may not like it or agree. But as a black person who helped saved the Clinton presidency, please just respect what I am saying. [emphasis added] Again, you disagree. But, I honestly believe the wounds will not heal. It’s personal and the Clintons have shown their darker demons. [emphasis...

A bitter Sir Elton John thinks America's sexism may be sinking his friend Hillary Rodham Clinton. John, a knighted British subject, said that gender discrimination is behind Clinton's problems in the polls as he addressed 5,000 Clinton supporters at Radio City Musical Hall last night in an event that raised $2.5 million for the cash-strapped campaign. "I never cease to be amazed by the misogynistic attitudes of some people in this country," said John, wearing a spangled black evening coat over a vermilion silk shirt. "I say to hell with them. ... I love you, Hillary, I'll always be there...

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is being hobbled in her race to overtake Illinois Sen. Barack Obama by persistent questions among voters about her honesty, according to polls. A new poll in North Carolina - which after the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, is the next big prize on the campaign trail - says a key element in Obama's success is that the state's voters value trust over experience. The survey for the Charlotte Observer/WCNC-TV reported that only 25 percent of voters gave high marks to Clinton for trustworthiness compared to 48 percent for Obama and 54 percent for Arizona...

The Clintons are resisting the disclosure of a document that could help clarify the New York senator's claims that she was "instrumental" in Northern Ireland peacemaking. The document's unlikely author: Chelsea Clinton. As a Stanford University senior in 2001, the former First Daughter wrote a 150-page thesis on the subject. Her faculty adviser, Prof. Jack Rakove, has said that Chelsea spoke with her father "at some length" about the negotiations. But the Clinton camp has declined to make it public. Through Clinton aides, Chelsea has directed reporters to ask Stanford for the document. But Stanford says it doesn't have a...

It's a bummer when an online slime machine is outed.Media Matters was an extremely effective leftwing propaganda outfit until it was found out that they were linked directly to Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as billionaire leftist George Soros.Copious Dissent explains what happens to a liberal slime machine like Media Matters after being exposed. It looks like Think Progress may be following in their footsteps.  

The Government has raised the number of detainees at Gitmo that they will be seeking the death penalty for to the enormous and shocking number of seven. The ACLU are quick and ready to defend these warriors! Backed by a slate of prominent legal figures, including former Attorney General Janet Reno and former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director William Webster, the ACLU has assembled a team of top civilian attorneys to supplement the military defense counsel assigned to represent Guantanamo’s “high-value detainees.” … The effort significantly adds to the legal forces that over the past seven years have challenged the...

I note from Bloomberg News that last year the former president received 2.8 million from a partnership with Ron Burkle. There are actually three Cayman Island accounts that Burkle pays Clinton from. To date, former President Clinton has received 15.5 million from Burkle's efforts. The link for this information can be found: HERE. Wikipedia describes the Burkle and Clinton Cayman Island relationship as follows: "..Recent calls for the release of Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former president Bill Clinton's tax returns have brought to light the fact that President Clinton is expecting a $20,000,000 payout from Burkle's supermarket...

Last week, Pittsburgh got a visit from a politician with the rare ability to transcend partisan divisions, and to remind us that -- no matter what our political differences -- Americans share a vision of a Shining City on the Hill. I'm talking, of course, about Hillary Clinton. While Barack Obama visited Oakland's Soldiers & Sailors Hall on March 28, Clinton was bewitching Pittsburgh Tribune-Review publisher Richard Mellon Scaife. Yes, that's right: The architect and arch-fiend behind what Clinton herself called a "vast right-wing conspiracy" is apparently quite taken with his onetime adversary. And the proof is a March 30...

Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean has a plan that will produce a nominee before his party's convention in August, avoiding what he fears could be a "really ugly and nasty" fiasco. Democratic leaders have begun complaining he has bungled the party's nominating process and alienated voters because of his failure to engineer a political compromise in the DNC's ill-advised decision to strip Florida and Michigan of all its delegates. But Mr. Dean, whose polls show the party's internecine warfare is hurting its chances in November, has been talking to party bigwigs about a deal and now says the delegations will...

Former President of the United States, Jimmy Carter has hinted that he might cast his vote for Senator Barack Obama to aid his emergence as the candidate for the Democrats in America’s bid to elect a new President. Carter, who is a Super Delegate from Georgia State, gave this hint at a media interaction after the Carter Center Awards for Guinea Worm Eradication in Abuja yesterday. Carter, who was accompanied by his wife Rosalynn, did not profess a direct support for Obama but rather choose to make a veiled statement. “We are very interested in the primaries. Don’t forget that...

Clinton campaign adviser points to presumptive GOP nominee's positions on torture, taxes, global warming, tobacco and health care as evidence. Could John McCain have been the Independent or Democratic senator from Arizona? Though that sounds awkward, especially in the midst of a presidential race with McCain as the GOP’s nominee, but one Washington insider claimed McCain considered abandoning the Republican Party. According to Sidney Blumenthal, a senior adviser for former President Bill Clinton and current adviser to Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, at one point McCain was going to leave the Republican Party and caucus with Senate Democrats. “And...

Harold M. Ickes never forgets a favor, especially if he's the one who did the favor. So the veteran political operative made sure that, when the time was right, he alone would call Garry Shay, former chairman of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party... And once Ickes started calling, he didn't stop until Shay said the words Ickes wanted to hear -- that he would support Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August... the man in charge of Clinton's feverish effort to lock up superdelegates is Ickes, whose enthusiasm for...

Could John McCain have been the Independent or Democratic senator from Arizona? Though that sounds awkward, especially in the midst of a presidential race with McCain as the GOP’s nominee, but one Washington insider claimed McCain considered abandoning the Republican Party. According to Sid "Vicious" Blumenthal, a senior adviser for former President Bill Clinton and current adviser to Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, at one point McCain was going to leave the Republican Party and caucus with Senate Democrats.

Tendentious Antiwar Scholarship by: Michael P. Tremoglie, April 01, 2008 The mainstream media is aghast and agog reporting yet another study, from another expert, claiming how wasteful the war in Iraq is, how Bush lied, and how the war is killing the country. This study is contained in a book titled, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, authored by economist Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. The authors worked for the Clinton administration. Stiglitz was the former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and Bilmes was also an economic adviser. Newspapers such as the...

We know why politicians lie when they get in trouble: they think the consequences of telling the truth are too severe to bear. That's why Richard Nixon lied about Watergate, and Bill Clinton about Monica Lewinsky. The more complicated question is why they fib—why politicians insist on stretching unimportant stories in ways that are easy to check and refute. Hillary Clinton's oft-told yarn about ducking sniper fire on the tarmac in Tuzla, Bosnia, in 1996 has gotten a lot of publicity, maybe too much. Her misrepresentation of her role in the Northern Ireland peace talks was more serious but less...

Campaigning For Mom In N. Carolina, Clinton Says She Was Sheltered From Chauvinism (AP) Chelsea Clinton said Saturday that she didn't realize how much sexism remained in the United States until she noticed the issue at recent campaign stops for her mother. "I didn't really get how much sexism there still was in our country until I was at a rally with my mom in New Hampshire, and someone came up to me and said, 'I just can't see a woman being commander in chief,"' Clinton said during a stop in Research Triangle Park. She also noted another New Hampshire...

Hillary Clinton’s made-from-whole-cloth fantasy about the perils of her trip to Bosnia was no unique foray into a world of make-believe accomplishments. She’s been doing that for a long time. Here’s another telling example: At a 1997 race-relations forum for teenagers in Boston, Hillary recalled the “pain” of a “childhood encounter” that helped her to grasp the injury suffered by the victims of bigotry. Her comments came as her husband was launching his second term in office by calling for a national dialogue on race and reconciliation. In an effort to empathize with her audience and inject herself into the...

Paul Begala: "Hillary's gonna quit when monkeys fly out of my butt."

Are Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elton John breaking U.S. laws by allowing the British pop singer, a foreign national, to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign by performing a concert on her behalf? That's the question Inside the Beltway put to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) yesterday, which does not rule out the possibility. First, some background supplied by the FEC: The goal of the 1966 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was to "minimize foreign intervention" in U.S. elections by establishing a series of limitations on foreign nationals. In 1974, the prohibition was incorporated...

Now that Hillary Clinton has been nailed in an outright fabrication of her role in Bosnia, it is time to remind ourselves of another, even more galling fantasy that Hillary tried to sell the voters. After 9/11, Hillary had a problem. New Yorkers were desperately focused on their own needs for protection and they were saddled with a Senator who was not one of them -- an Arkansasn or was it a Chicagoan? Interviewed on the "Today" show one week after 9/11, she spun an elaborate yarn. The kindest thing we could say was that it was a fantasy. Or...