Prepare yourselves for a new round of Hillary Hatin'Kerplosions!

It seems MANY people have started dancing on Senator Clinton's grave a bit too early!

A new round of Associated Press/Pew polls from Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina shows Hillary Clinton leading in ALL three Democratic contests.

Monday, December 03
AP Pew Poll   

Iowa Democratic Caucus - Obama 26, Clinton 31, Edwards 19, Richardson 10   

Clinton +5.0

New Hampshire Democratic Primary - Clinton 38, Obama 19, Edwards 15, Richardson 10   

Clinton +19.0

South Carolina Democratic Primary - Clinton 45, Obama 31, Edwards 10   

Clinton +14.0

Uh oh! Is it time for a Obama cultists suicide watch?

Oh no!  This will, of course call for a round of shrieks from  Obama fan boys that AP is ...somehow...in the Clintons pocket... and then that will be followed by ... whiny arguments that this is somehow another...

"desperate attempt" from the "failing and flailing" Clinton campaign that is "COLLAPSING" and "going down like the Titanic"...yada, yada, yada....

Here's some info children -

You are WRONG!

-----------------------

This poll goes against two other recent polls showing Barack Obama ahead in Iowa, but in all those cases Iowa has been within the margin of error -- meaning that the race for Iowa is almost certainly tight.

BUT IT AINT ALL ABOUT IOWA FOLKS!

ITS ABOUT DELEGATE COUNT! WE GOT OURSELVES A NATIONAL PRIMARY THESE DAYS - SO LETS GET TO IT!!!

Bring it on!

Its gonna get mighty hot in this kitchen in the next month.

Hillary Clinton didnt start this fight - but she sure is gonna finish it.

Its gonna be fun....REAL FUN!

HELLO CHICAGO!!

UPDATE: As I suggested yesterday, media interest in this story has moved it from David Yepsen's blog at the Des Moines Register to the Politico, to all the Iowa political blogs, to the Baltimore Sun, to the Chicago Tribune, to the Austin American Statesman, to the Chicago Sun Times, to ABC News, to...

Fair or not, this is the media buzz story of the weekend in Iowa.  Maybe not every political reporter is writing about this, but all have now read Yepsen's column and all are talking about "the Illinois Caucus".

December 2, 2007

LYNN SWEET Chicago Sun Times:

WASHINGTON -- A Barack Obama campaign plan to encourage Iowa college students who are not from Iowa to caucus for him Jan. 3 -- especially those from neighboring Illinois -- was spanked Saturday by Iowa's leading political columnist.

While a scheme to make local someone from out of state (or from another district or ward) is business as usual in Chicago -- textbook Illinois and Chicago politics -- someone raised without a Chicago political sensibility may find this tactic offensive. It backfired into a negative column from Iowa's influential David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register.

The idea that Team Obama does not fight fairly has entered the media narrative, now watch how this idea grows in the coming weeks.

Expect to see more stories about Obama's relationship with the "Chicago machine", especially about how he, David Axelrod and Mayor Richard Daley interconnect.

This will also lead to a closer look at how Obama and Axelrod used other "legal" though unethical tactics to clear the field for him in both his State Senate and his US Senate races.  This of course, will also lead to a reevaluation of Obama's relations with his original political supporters from the machine, including, the never mentioned, but soon to be tried Antonio "Tony" Rezko.

Wait, watch and see....it's a-coming...

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Below is my original post  on the "Chicago caucus"

"Hello Chicago!"  - Joe Biden's greeting to Obama supporters bussed in to the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner.

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Ive been expecting this...

Iowans are getting mad at how Team Obama is filling their events, their streets and now...even planning to fill their caucuses with Illinois folk bussed in from across the state line.

David Yepsen in the Des Moines Register has a piece called "The Illinois Caucus" :

Barack Obama's campaign is telling Iowa college students they can caucus for him even if they aren't from Iowa.

His campaign offers that advice in a brochure being distributed on college campuses in the state.  A spokesman said it's legal and that 50,000 of the fliers are being distributed.

The brochure says: "If you are not from Iowa, you can come back for the Iowa caucus and caucus in your college neighborhood."

Given that lots of students in Iowa's colleges and universities are from Obama's neighboring home state of Illinois, the effort could net him thousands of additional votes on caucus night.

It's not the first time Obama has profited from the fact he's from an adjacent state. Illinois residents routinely show up at the candidate's events in eastern Iowa.  (The first question Obama took at an Iowa town meeting was from a guy from Naperville.)

Also, campaign volunteers come from Illinois to campaign for him. And opposing campaigns accused Obama's campaign of busing people into Iowa from Illinois to attend the recent Jefferson Jackson Dinner, a charge Obama's campaign has denied.

While it's legal for college students to register to vote in Iowa to do that, this raises the question of whether it's fair, or politically smart.   No presidential campaign in memory has ever made such a large, open attempt to encourage students from out of state, many of whom pay out-of-state tuition, to participate in the caucuses. No other campaign appears to be doing it in this campaign cycle.

Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama's campaign, said "we have no intention of doing something here that is in any way illegal or that will raise questions about the credibility of the caucuses."  

That's fine but these are the Iowa caucuses.  Asking people who are "not from Iowa" to participate in them changes the nature of the event.  

And trying to pack the caucuses with people from Illinois might taint Obama's showing.  Polls show Obama is in a close race with Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.  Recent surveys show him with a lead of a few points.  If he wins the Iowa caucuses with Illinois votes, his victory would be discounted by his opponents and media people.

The issue of out-of-state residents caucusing in Iowa came up recently when one of the candidates, Chris Dodd, urged his rivals to promise not to encourage their staffers working in Iowa to register as voters so they could participate in the caucuses here.   Most of them agreed, including Obama's campaign.  (And, frankly, a few hundred staffers wouldn't have much of an impact on the outcome anyway.  Besides, most of those staffers will be working on caucus night and wouldn't have time to participate.)

But turning out-of-state college students into Iowa voters is a different, larger, matter.  Thousands of votes are involved and it risks offending long-time Iowa residents.

But, then, they do politics a little differently in Illinois than they do in Iowa.

From CBS News and Politco by Mike Allen:

Obama warned drive could offend Iowans

The campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is drawing some local skepticism for a drive to recruit non-Iowans to caucus at their Iowa colleges.

"If you are not from Iowa, you can come back for the Iowa caucus and caucus in your college neighborhood," says a four-page "Students for Barack Obama" brochure provided to Politico.

David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register, the state's leading political commentator, wrote in a blog post called "The Illinois Caucus" that the effort to increase participation by out-of-staters "risks offending long-time Iowa residents."

A Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign official said: "We are not courting out-of-staters. The Iowa caucus ought to be for Iowans."

Chris Dodd for President Iowa State Director Julie Andreeff Jensen said in a statement on Saturday:

"I was deeply disappointed to read today about the Obama campaign's attempt to recruit thousands of out-of-state residents to come to Iowa for the caucuses. ... `New Politics' shouldn't be about scheming to evade either the spirit or the letter of the rules that guide the process. That may be the way politics is played in Chicago, but not in Iowa."

Yepsen wrote that the out-of-state college students' participation would be legal, but said he isn't certain "whether it's fair, or politically smart."

"No presidential campaign in memory has ever made such a large, open attempt to encourage students from out of state, many of whom pay out-of-state tuition, to participate in the caucuses.," he said. "No other campaign appears to be doing it in this campaign cycle."

The question of who can participate was already sticky. In early November, Dodd's campaign staff asked the campaigns to pledge that their out-of-state staff and volunteers would not attempt to caucus. Most of the campaigns signed the pledge.

The Clinton official said: "We have a policy that if you move to Iowa for the express purpose of working on the campaign, you can not caucus."

But team Obama not only wouldnt sign the pledge back then -
NOW theyre actively recruiting "out of staters" to caucus.

Bringing politics "Chicago" and "Obama Style" to Iowa.

NEW KIND OF POLITICS?....Indeed.

Expect this to become a  BIG ISSUE between now and January 3.....BIG...

The young Barry Hussein Obama may have had the vast and unique "experience"  of having been raised in Hawaii and overseas in Indonesia, but as a grown man he sure has a lot to learn about how small town folk here on the "Mainland' feel about being condescended to by big city urbanites.

Obama stepped in a pile of cow patties on Nightline Monday night in an unaired segment of the interview he had with Terry Moran.

But this wasnt the first time Obama has done this ...

Remember, back in the summer, during Obama's first high-profile visit to an Iowa farm he posed the following question:

"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?" he asked. "I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff.

Hmmm...  it has been pointed out that there isnt even a Whole Foods market in the entire state of Iowa....and that Iowans eat ...um..."lettuce".

----------

Now on to the unaired Wisdom of Obama on just how "articulate" and surprising those Iowa folks are...

Delivered to you FRESH from the Sweethearts at Hillaryiss44.com

Adult Experience

Poor Americans. Yesterday they had to be confused. Common sense told them Hillary is ahead and doing well in the presidential race. Big Media told Americans something else.

A reputable Gallup poll is published showing Hillary ahead, but all Big Media will discuss is a faulty interactive poll which shows Hillary behind. One (1) poll shows Obama barely ahead in Iowa and Big Media uses that one poll to negate all the polls showing Hillary ahead in Iowa, nationwide, and just about everywhere else. Little wonder that Americans do not trust their media. And Big Blogs which were supposed to be a remedy to Big Media misinformation - are no better.

We can only conclude that Americans will once again be surprised by the election results when Hillary wins.

While Big Media/Big Blogs continued their march into misinformation yesterday, Hillary continued to gather strength. In New Hampshire, Dr. Susan Lynch, spouse to the Governor, endorsed Hillary. In all likelihood the endorsement will help Hillary maintain her already substantial lead in New Hampshire.

Meanwhile Obama appeared on Nightline last night and kept up his weeks long slimy attacks on Hillary. Typical for Obama he began the Nightline interview with a lie.

   TERRY MORAN: So let's talk about experience, which you talk about a lot. You said recently that the strongest experience you have in foreign relations is that you grew up for four years as a child in Southeast Asia.

   SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, that's not exactly what I said. What I said was I think one of the things that sets me apart is that I spent time in other countries.

No, Barack, that is exactly what you said:

   "Probably the strongest experience I have in foreign relations is the fact that I spent four years living overseas when I was a child in southeast Asia."

Terry Moran could have easily quoted ABC News' own published reports to contradict Obama, but we suppose Terry does not read his own network's reports.

If Terry does not watch or read his own networks reports, he could have watched CNN which had this amusing comment from Senator Joe Biden when Obama's foolish statement first aired:

   Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also joined the fray Tuesday afternoon when asked what he thought of Obama's comments.

   "I think he's right," Biden said smiling. "That is his strongest [foreign policy] credential."

This is not the first time Obama has openly lied to Americans. Obama lied about "preconditions" and Obama lied about attacking Pakistan. TV reporter David Shuster essentially called Obama a liar on the Pakistan issue.

After his initial Nightline lie, Obama attacked Hillary's experience:

   MORAN: So you think her being first lady isn't all that, isn't as much as she's claiming?

   OBAMA: Well, look, I have no doubt that she is an intelligent, capable woman. There's no doubt that Bill Clinton had faith in her and consulted with her on issues, in the same way that I would consult with Michelle, if there were issues. On the other hand, I don't think Michelle would claim that she is the best qualified person to be a United States senator by virtue of me talking to her on occasion about the work that I've done.

   And I think that Senator Clinton certainly has experience that she should tout, and I don't think anybody would suggest that somehow she's not qualified to be president of the United States, in terms of the work that she's done in the United States Senate. I think she's done some good work. But I think that, you know, there is a tendency to overestimate some of the experience that is out there. In fact, our most successful presidents have been people who were successful not because of their wealth of Washington experience, but because of the life lessons and schools of hard knocks that they had gone through. And that's true whether you're talking about Lincoln, or FDR, or any of our greatest presidents.

Maybe Obama is just dense. Michelle after all works in a hospital while he works as a Senator whereas Hillary worked with Bill Clinton in the White House. Can anything be clearer? Either Obama is being deliberately obtuse or he is not very bright. As to this nonsense about Lincoln not being experienced Obama needs an American History lesson to clue him in on Lincoln - the founder of the Illinois Whig Party and the National Republican Party, and long term player in national politics particularly on abolition and tarriff issues. And the dynastic FDR was no slouch when it came to be a major player in national politics.

This morning the Los Angeles Times has published an article which addresses Hillary's experience.

   She always came prepared. From the first planning sessions for her husband's victorious 1992 presidential run through the final 1994 White House meetings she chaired as the Clinton administration's ill-fated healthcare initiative collapsed, Hillary Rodham Clinton was a force to be reckoned with as a decision-maker.

   Her debut on the national stage in the early 1990s was a defining era for Clinton, a period when she emerged as Bill Clinton's most influential campaign strategist and policy advisor. She was forceful and methodical in shaping the Clinton administration's domestic policies and political strategy, and proved to be a disciplined partner to her famously disorganized husband: commanding, opinionated, daunting.

   "Bill talked about social change, I embodied it," Clinton wrote in "Living History," her autobiography.

   Meetings were her milieu. She would arrive toting the crisp yellow legal pads she had carried habitually since her days as a corporate lawyer. Armed with an exhaustively researched grasp of the issues at hand, she would press for still more options while lacerating opposing arguments with surgical precision.

   Clinton's all-access pass into the West Wing gave her an intimate education in presidential decision-making that none of her opponents can claim. She observed at close range how big government works, and she learned painfully from her missteps how easily it bogs down.

The L.A. Times notes that there were difficulties in the White House years and that Hillary never had ultimate executive authority. But the difficulties then are pluses now:

   Presidential historian James McGregor Burns, who studied the uneasy dynamics of the Clinton White House, said that even her setbacks amounted to "educational failures" that toughened her for the long run.

   "She's been tested over and over again," Burns said. "The question for voters is whether they feel she passed those tests and whether they think she learned from them."

Hillary's history as an advisor in 1991's presidential election campaign was presaged by experience in the 1972 and 1976 McGovern and Carter presidential campaigns. Once in the White House Hillary was a major player:

   From the start, Clinton's campaign role was left as amorphous as possible, allowing her to carve out her own domain.

   "No one raised a question about how her role was defined," recalled lawyer Mickey Kantor, the campaign chairman. "It was assumed. You wanted her involved at the highest level."

   Involved she was, and in everything. She used her ties to New York legal circles to raise cash and tap political pros. While staffers took a breather on a bus caravan through Texas, old friend Bill Burton watched as "Hillary sat in the back and took charge of a press release on natural-gas policy." As she peppered her husband's aides with strategy, she was empire-building -- cherry-picking loyalists who would work at the core of her White House staff.

   Kantor and other campaign veterans credit her as the driving force behind the rapid-response "war room" operation. Later, she rode herd on the "defense team," a cloistered group of staffers and lawyers who fended off media queries about the couple's financial deals, rumors of Bill's infidelity and his youthful dealings with Arkansas draft officials during the Vietnam War.

   "She methodically set down the counter-strategy in a disciplined way," said Betsey Wright, who ran the unit from Little Rock, Ark.

Democrats who think the Ripublicans will sit back and sing Kumbaya after the next election have not been paying attention. Newt Gingrich deliberately set out in the 1990s to remove Democrats from power. Using tools such as "term limits", scandal mongering (which drove out the Democratic Speaker of the House) and other hardball tactics coordinated with allied media outlets and talk radio the Ripublicans took control of the government.

The full sum of the Hillary White House years, the good and the bad, will prove valuable when Hillary becomes the chief executive.

Obama can tout his child tourism all he wants. But for the office of the President, we need someone with adult experience.

One thing is clear above all other things, the pundits in the media village look at politics as sport and entertainment and more than anything, they love the excitement, glamor and ratings a close election offers.

And they'll do whatever it takes, to make elections more interesting for themselves.

From Campaign 2000, MSNBC with Brian Williams.

HOWARD FINEMAN (9/21/00): I don't think the media was going to allow, just by its nature, the next seven weeks, the last seven or eight weeks of the campaign, to be all about Al Gore's relentless, triumphant march to the presidency. We want a race, I suppose. If we have a bias of any kind, it's that we like to see a contest and we like to see it down to the end if we can.

It's Deja Vu...all over again...

----------

It would seem from what the pundit crowd have been saying recently that the 2008 presidential race has tightened so much that it now is a real "horserace". That now the chances of Hillary getting the Democratic nomination and her winning the White House are getting slimmer and slimmer.

But thats not how clear-eyed professional oddsmakers at the Briish gambling houses see it.

To them, Hillary Clinton remains the big favorite.

From the website Gambling Nine One One.
Odds on winning the White House:

Hillary Clinton Holds Firm With Oddsmakers

November 25, 2007

2008 US Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has held firm with online oddsmakers while holding off the likes of Barack Obama.  The best odds on Hillary at press time November 25, 2007 could be found at BodogLife where she was surprisingly still an even favorite compared to the peak 1/3 odds found elsewhere.

Rudy Giuliani had the next shortest odds at Bodog: 9/4.

Republican candidate Ron Paul continued to get little respect from the oddsmakers at Bodog nor the gamblers where he remained a firm 14/1 long shot to win.  Mike Huckabee, who's been mentioned as the dark horse surprise in recent days among Republicans, continues to sit pretty at long 35/1 odds.

Like with most online bookmakers, Mitt Romney sits at third or worse.  Compared to Fred Thompson at 6/1 odds, Romney was listed with 8/1 odds.  John McCain was just behind Ron Paul at 16/1 odds.

Barack Obama continued to be a long shot when compared to Clinton's favorite status.  At BodogLife he was listed with odds of 5/1 and this was fairly consistent among the various online gambling websites.

Romney is tending to dip down to 8/1 odds of becoming the next US President across the board.  Romney and Obama are both listed with 6/1 odds at British bookmaker William Hill.

John Edwards has the better odds.  He tends to be listed anywhere between 15/1 and 20/1 odds depending on where you look.

_____

Lets translate that for you -

Depending on the betting house, the oddsmakers say that its:

between 6 to 18 times more likely that Hillary will become President than Obama.

between 15 to 60 times more likely that Hillary becomes President than John Edwards.

Please remember, the lower numbers produced above came because one online gambling site had what the analyst in the piece called "surprisingly" set the odds for Hillary to win the White House to be  ONLY even money.

----------------

Oh well, but thats not the narrative that the political pundit class is spreading in these last weeks before the Primaries begin. They keep writing that Hillary is Falling and that her chances to win the White House are dropping.

Why? How?

The "how" first.

They have carefully selected which polls to push that will drive their storyline and help create the "horserace" atmosphere that they desire.

Now, to the "why".

The political pundits who live in the "village" don't like Hillary too much.  So they push and promote her closest rival.
What a shock...

Just like in 2000, they didnt care for Al Gore and created a "narrative" that he was a fake and a "liar" and so, created another "script" that George Bush was a fine fellow to "have a beer with" and a real sincere - though maybe not so ambitious - kind of guy....

These fools don't cover "the news", they push an agenda.  

Sometimes, its following the wishes of their corporate masters....but, oftimes, its just as shallow as their desire to see a close and more exciting race.   If there isnt one, they will work to create one.  

Lets look to the 'incomparable Daily Howler and see how this was done in 2000.

In September 2000, Gore was pulling away in the polls; the experts said the campaign was over. And then, out of nowhere, the press corps struck twice! First, that idiot doggy-pill tale. Then, the union lullaby scandal--sadly, an obvious joke

As Alter noted, Gore's progress in the polls was reversed. A few weeks later, the nonsense which followed that first debate pretty much finished things off.

So why in the world did the national press corps push those idiot tales in September? On September 21, 2000, Howard Fineman answered that question for Brian Williams, Jack Welch's "Lost Boy." Given the history that has unfolded, this was one of the most remarkable statements any journalist ever made on any TV program.

Why did the national press pretend that Gore had lied about that lullaby? Why did they pretend that he had lied about those doggy-pills? Here's what Fineman told Williams that night. This is truly a tale for the ages:

   FINEMAN (9/21/00): I don't think the media was going to allow, just by its nature, the next seven weeks, the last seven or eight weeks of the campaign, to be all about Al Gore's relentless, triumphant march to the presidency. We want a race, I suppose. If we have a bias of any kind, it's that we like to see a contest and we like to see it down to the end if we can.

Look! Fineman showed BOTH the HOW and the WHY!!

There it is folks!  Wonder why the pundits and the oddsmakers disagree about what is happening in the primary race?

The fools in the village are BORED with the idea of Hillary cruising thru the primaries and want to make it more INTERESTING....for THEMSELVES!

No matters that this kind of clowning from this spoiled and very stupid crew is precisely how we ended up with a dunce in the White House and our armies fighting TWO wars in the Middle East.

I have written before that Obama lost me when he joined with Russert in the debate in Philadlphia and pretended that the demands for release of the White House archives was anything but a ploy by the media and the GOP to embarrass the Clintons and hurt Democrats chances for 2008.  

Since then, team Obama have shown over and over that they are in league with and are working in concert with - their "great pals' at MSNBC and the rest of what Mark Halperin calls the "Gang of 500".

Fine....you guys in Camp Obama do that....

Enjoy your repeated visits with Tweetie and his lapdog Fineman on Hardball... Chuckle with an "insiders" cynicism with the WPs Anne Kornblut and the NYT's Katherine Seelye...Cheer when the woman who attacked Gore viscously in 2000, your sweetie Mo Dowd, does the same to Hillary this time...

But I suggest you put YOUR money down on the table and bet.

I have.

THIS ISN'T 2000.

Ill take the clear eyed wisdom of a bookie ANYDAY over the "ideas" and opinions that come from that perfumed set of total idiots and jackals who comprise the Washington political press corps.

Since Im too busy to write today, I offer again the clear headed thinking of the wise women at

hillaryis44.com

and to the angry boys at this website....youre right - these gals live in their Mom's basement too!

Someday, there will heroic songs written about these women and statues put up in public squares for their brave and important work in telling the real truth, against the wishes and slanders of the haters and the media horde, and helping in their own devastating and funny way, to save our nation from disaster..

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Obama, Cheney, Romney, and Rove

---

Maybe we misjudged the quality of Tim Russert's questions.

At the time of the Halloween debate, we appropriately criticized Russert for leading the assault on Hillary, with wedge issue questions, while asking Obama little of substance.

Russert questioned Obama as to his choice of Halloween costume. We mocked Russert's question. Now as we recall that Obama answered he would wear a Mitt Romney mask, perhaps we were wrong. It turns out Obama decided to adopt Romney not just as a mask but as a role model too.

Recently the Obama campaign was in full drama mode over a Ripublican Bob Novak column. Mitt Romney too was in full drama mode. There were similarities to both dramas:

   Former Bay State Gov. Mitt Romney's presidential campaign furiously denied rumors yesterday that his own supporters were involved in calls placed to voters in Iowa and New Hampshire that spread anti-Romney smears under the guise of conducting a poll.

   Political strategists and bloggers slung accusations at Romney's camp yesterday after a scathing article appeared in the National Review titled "Did Mitt Romney Push Poll Himself?" which identified several Romney supporters at Western Wats, a Utah-based firm believed to have made the calls. The practice of using phony polls to plant a negative message is commonly known as push-polling. [snip]

   Among the questions asked during the 20-minute calls placed last week were whether the person polled knew Romney received Vietnam-era military deferments while serving in the Mormon missionary in France, that none of his sons served in the military and that the Mormon religion didn't accept blacks as bishops until the 1970s. [snip]

   The National Review article cited sources who speculated Romney's camp put the hit out on itself "because his campaign wanted polling data regarding the negative perception of his Mormon faith for internal use." But others speculated a motivation to pre-empt attacks on Romney's faith.

As the Romney push polling story developed, it turned out the few people who received the alleged phone calls were Romney employees.

   Deepening the mystery surrounding the anti-Mormon polling calls, the Romney campaign is confirming that it referred reporters to two recipients of the calls without disclosing that the two were also on the Romney campaign payroll, TPM Election Central has learned.

   In response to questions from TPM Election Central, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden confirmed that the campaign had failed to disclose this info to reporters. Madden suggested that the campaign had identified them as "supporters," which is a far cry from being directly paid by the campaign, as the two call recipients were.

   The revelation could add grist to the theory -- now spreading on conservative blogs and even getting coverage by news organizations -- that the Romney campaign itself is behind the calls. Some have speculated that the calls -- which attack Romney and refer to his Mormon faith while saying positive things about McCain -- are an effort by the campaign to test negative messages about itself while getting McCain blamed for the calls.

   The new revelation could give more ammo to those who question whether the firm making the calls -- which is already reported to have on staff several people who have donated to the Romney campaign -- knowingly called Romney supporters because they could be counted on to tell the press about the calls and to suggest to reporters that Romney rival John McCain was behind them.

   It also raises the question of whether the Romney campaign referred reporters to the callers -- without disclosing their relationship with the campaign -- for the same purpose.

The Obama drama moment:

   Over the weekend, Robert Novak printed what used to be called a "blind item" but now is called "daily journalism."

   Novak wrote: "Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed."

   The item probably would have died a quiet death -- there have been a number of presidential candidate scandal rumors percolating on the Web that have not gotten much attention -- when Obama assured that it would reach critical mass.

   Obama issued a vigorous and lengthy statement saying the Novak item was "devoid of facts" and was "Swift Boat politics."

   But the guilty party, Obama made clear, was not Novak; it was Clinton.

   "If the purpose of this shameless item was to daunt or discourage me or supporters of our campaign from challenging and changing the politics of Washington, it will fail," Obama said in language that neatly fit into his campaign theme. "In fact, it will only serve to steel our resolve."

   And he issued a challenge: "In the interest of our party, and her own reputation, Sen. Clinton should make either public any and all information referred to in the item, or concede the truth: that there is none."

   Obama also whacked Clinton for hypocrisy, because she had stated during last Thursday's debate in Las Vegas that she did not like the politics of "throwing mud" but was now engaging in it herself.

Politico listed several reasons for the Obama reaction, two of which we find interesting: "it served as inoculation so that if more stories surface, Obama can claim they are just more Clinton-inspired dirty tricks" and "it shifted press attention away from Obama's poor debate performance in Las Vegas and onto Hillary's allegedly poor behavior in leaking scurrilous information."

Obama does not want to answer questions about Rezko or about his previous non-public life. Any question about Obama's ethics and associations and finances is blasted as being "old", "answered", or "swiftboating". But all the questions about Rezko are recent, open and relevant.

In the recent series of campaign statements Obama was imitating Romney but in bed with Karl Rove.

   If Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Hillary Clinton's campaign told him that they had some dirt on Obama, would Obama's staff react as they did to the Robert Novak column of November 17? And yes, I am putting Novak in the same category as the crazy Iranian leader. Novak has damaged U.S. national security as much as Ahmadinejad with his exposure of Valerie Plame and the subsequent destruction of her clandestine intelligence network.

   Why has Senator Barack Obama kept the Novak story alive through repeated statements for days? Is he just naïve or is he misinformed? Is he really so unfamiliar with the journalistic incest of Washington and Novak's status as a Republican hit man? Why would Obama focus his campaign on unfounded "smears" circulated by Novak? Why would Obama, the candidate of "hope," pump up the claims of Novak, "the prince of darkness"?

Larry Johnson, author of Why is Obama in Bed with Karl Rove? needs to read this site more often. For Obama smears is normal operating procedure:

   The Republican smear masters had already tipped their hand for dealing with Hillary Clinton. Look at Karl Rove's debut column in Newsweek, where he lays out the strategy that Obama appears to be parroting:

   "And so the question to John McCain from a woman at a town hall in South Carolina last Monday was tasteless, but key: `How do we beat the [rhymes with witch]?' Right now, Republicans are focusing much of their fire on Senator Clinton. Criticizing her unites the party, stirs up the unsettled feelings many swing voters have toward her and allows each candidate to say why he is best able to beat her."

   With Rove's instructions to Republicans in mind, take a new look at Obama's reaction to Novak. Is Obama wearing a wrist bracelet that says, "what would Karl Rove do"?

   Robert Novak is a seasoned conservative columnist with a long history of publishing falsehoods, distortions and gossip. And he has been in bed with Karl Rove in running "information ops" against democrats. For decades he has been renowned for inflating shreds of tidbits of rumors into major stories to support various Republican efforts. In 1992, Karl Rove, one of Novak's regular sources, was fired from the campaign of President George H.W. Bush for leaking derogatory information to Novak about Bush's campaign manager and friend, Robert Mosbacher. In 2003, Rove again served as a source to Novak, leaking the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. Even though the CIA warned Novak not to disclose her CIA identity in the interests of national security, he did so, insuring that Rove got a copy of the column before it was published. In 2004, Novak promoted the smear campaign of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against Senator John Kerry's heroic Vietnam War record. When it was revealed that Novak's son was the marketing director for the right-wing publisher of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth tract defaming Kerry, Novak expressed disdain about the conflict-of-interest: "I don't think it's relevant."

   By his own admission Novak's latest hyped controversy has no basis in fact. On November 17, he wrote, "Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it." His sourcing consisted of "word of mouth" and unnamed "experienced Democratic operatives." Two days later, on Fox News, where Novak is a commentator, he confessed that he had heard a rumor from someone who had heard a rumor from someone. In short, he had no facts, perhaps explaining why Novak has been dubbed "No Facts" for years.

   Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson's categorical statement would seem to have put an end to this pseudo-event: "The Clinton campaign has nothing to do with this item." But it did not end. Instead, it is being kept artificially alive.

   As soon as Novak published his rumor, Obama elevated and dignified it as though it had credibility. "But in the interest of our party, and her own reputation, Senator Clinton should either make public any and all information referred to in the item, or concede the truth: that there is none," he declared. Obama turned the alleged smear upside down. Rather than acknowledge that the predictable right-wing smear artist Novak was responsible for the innuendo, Obama accused Senator Clinton of being ultimately to blame. With this extraordinary statement, Obama lashed himself to Novak's credibility as a reliable source on a story that transparently lacked any true source.

Larry, Larry, Larry -- we deal with Obama's smears every day - Obama knows exactly what he is doing.

   Even when the Clinton campaign forthrightly again denied the item was false and that no one involved in the campaign had anything to do with it, Obama's campaign refused to let the matter die. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe once again accused Senator Clinton and her campaign of doing what Novak claimed: "Are `agents' of their campaign spreading these rumors? And do they have `scandalous' information that they are not releasing?"

   Once again, the Clinton campaign openly stated it had nothing to do with the story at all. Then, Plouffe made another statement that suggested Obama had somehow wrung a confession out of the Clinton campaign and still implied that it was behind Novak's lie: "The Clinton campaign has admitted that they do not possess the `scandalous information' in question and we take them at their word. But what we don't accept is their assertion that this is somehow falling for Republican tricks."

   The following day, November 19, Obama began a new line of attack, picking up a discredited story circulated months ago. "I'm not in this race to fulfill some long-held plan or because it was owed to me," Obama said. An Obama spokesperson reinforced the point: "Barack Obama has not been mapping out his run for president from Washington for the last 20 years like some of his opponents."

Wow, Larry Johnson does get it.

   But where did this new attack originate? Just as he had used Novak's false story for the previous two days, now he tried to damage Senator Clinton's reputation by using another patently false story. Months ago, Jeff Gerth, the reporter who spent years hyping the Whitewater fables as real, and his co-author Dale Van Natta, attempted to promote their anti-Hillary screed, "Her Way," with the supposedly startling revelation that Hillary and planned to run for president 20 years ago. But Gerth and Van Natta had no actual source. And the one source to whom they did attribute the story, Pulitzer Prize winning historian Taylor Branch, was someone they never interviewed and who told the Washington Post, "The story is preposterous. I never heard either Clinton talk about a `plan' for them both to become president."

   Despite this story's exposure as false for months, Obama eagerly exploited it to try to portray Senator Clinton as Lady Macbeth. First using Novak and then Gerth for his materials, he painted her as a dirty trickster, dishonest and recklessly ambitious.

   But why does Obama do this? Once Novak's story was exposed as a smear itself, why didn't he stop? Why did he keep it going? And why did he revive the Gerth falsehood to tarnish Senator Clinton's character?

   Obama's tactics appear in sync with Rove's script. His feigned victimhood is a negative attack on Senator Clinton's character to drive the numbers, which in turn Obama hopes will determine the nomination. While posing above the fray, but executing Rove's strategy and exploiting Novak's innuendo, Obama has embraced the audacity of hype.

"Audacity of hype" is a weak description of what Obama is doing. A correspondent sent us this:

   "all his moves and attacks are in this manner, being dirty, and stupid (i guess his stupidity and the willingness of the press to play along is really what bothers me) and then hiding behind high-minded rhetoric is the CLASSIC bush move - and it IS NOT that the deomcrats went along, as obama says and dirties the well for his own party. it's the media that really fell for it, and created a political climate in which it was very hard to oppose bush, because doing so would get you hammered in the press. If the democrats were tougher from the begining, yes they might have been able to stop that, but you need massive organizational, coordinated strenght like the republicans have wielded in the past 20 years to push things in the other direction. And when Obama comes out and attacks the democrats it's just a form of sabotage - shows that this guy cares nothing but for himself - ofcourse he actually believes progressive ideas, but when you are so self-obsessed with yourself, and dastardly as he is, the actual result is counterproductive to the overall progressive effort. He has gotten so caught up in his own abilities, that he is sacrificing everything he thinks he believes in. That's the other reason Im pissed- it's hubris in the most classical greek sense, his story really is the backbone of greek tragedy, because everything he does is self-inflicted. Anyway, just a real lowlife all around, not taking a shot at the media, because as we discussed he really craves these peoples respect, not realizing they deserve nothing but contempt"

Sounds about right to us. Obama's models appear to be his cousin Cheney, Romney and Rove.

Today, Im thankful for the freedoms guarateed by the First Amendment and also...

for the Wit and Wisdom of the Wonderful Women at Hillaryis44.com

Where this diary was originally posted.

---------------------------

It's Thanksgiving Day.

We have a lot to be grateful for this past year. We are grateful for the clearcut, obvious blessings, received this year. We are also grateful for the less decernible blessings, the hidden blessings.

Before briefly listing some of the major blessings received this year we stroll down Memory Lane once again.

We began this website back in April 2007. At the time, the `internets' and certain dinosaur pundits were predicting the collapse of the Hillary Clinton for President campaign. The predictions of gloom and doom were everywhere. By late May, by Memorial Day, said the finger bowl pundits, Hillary would no longer be a frontrunner.

Hillary was being destroyed in fundraising the gloomsters said. Hillary was disliked they said. `She's not as good as Bill' they proclaimed. Total collapse was at hand, `it's only name recognition', `it's too early to listen to the polls', `not a single person I know is supporting her', her support is `a mile wide and an inch thick' they shouted and shouted.

But our favorite delusions from that Springtime for Haters are the `nobody really likes her' and 'she has no support on the blogosphere/internet/netroots' delusion.

Back then, on May 11, 2007, there was a discussion on one of the Big Blogs and our Pink Oasis received one of the first mentions on the nutosphere. A brave and vastly outnumbered Hillary supporter by the name of "samueldem" was engaged in a discussion with an Obama supporter. Samueldem was quoting from an article we had written to dispute the notion, so treasured by opponents, of - the Hillary `Dynasty'. Samueldem wrote:

   I am not affiliated with the website accessible via the link below, but the dynasty argument is discussed by the blog owner. I have included a short excerpt below the link. This is a pro-Hillary blog all the way, but I think the commentary brings up some valid points, however biased the blog owner may be.

Samueldem's interlocutor replied:

   Wow, a strong and thoughtful case for HRC in the blogosphere- that's rare...

Well, things have certainly changed. No one with any sense (there is still an abundance of the senseless typing rapidly in their little bubbles of delusion) dares question Hillary's internet support any longer. Hillary has more than a million supporters on the `internets' and we are no longer silent nor are we cowed.

More and more Hillary supporters start websites to support Hillary. More and more established voices break out in song to endorse and defend Hillary. Also important to acknowledge are the many other, established and new voices, increasingly becoming aware of the ugly nature of anti-Hillary attacks - and finally ending their silence and speaking out in the name of decency and fairness.

So, we are thankful for all the voices throwing off fear and risking hostility in defense of Hillary on the internet. Many of those voices post here. Others come here to refresh themselves among happy Hillary supporters, without commenting, and we are thankful for all the gathering choir.

We are also thankful for some very hidden blessings. Declaring something a hidden blessing has its pitfalls. Too often we turn genuine calamity into a fake virtue by labeling it a "blessing in disguise". After sufficient thought we are sure there is no self-delusion nor public deception when we speak of the following hidden blessings:

Let's be thankful for the attacks Hillary has endured. Yes, it would have been nice not to have them occur, we are not fools. But this is a "No Whine" zone. For a long time Democrats, in too many election cycles, have endured attacks and responded with moaning and groaning and bluster and fluster. We do condemn, and will continue to respond to, the shameful attacks on character and honesty which speak more to the destructive intent, lack of character, and dishonesty of Hillary opponents.

We are grateful that in this election cycle our candidate is AWARE of the attacks to come and prepares for them. We are grateful that responses to the attacks do not take weeks to be addressed. We are grateful that we have a fighter leading the charge.

We are also grateful that with each painful attack our candidate learns how better to respond; the Hillary Team becomes more practiced and focused; Hillary supporters become more energized.

Hillary has been under sustained attack from her Democratic opponents in this race. Republicans use attacks against Hillary to promote themselves - even running ads against Hillary in New Hampshire and elsewhere. Big Media and Big Blogs try to drag her down for their self interests. Naderites and PINOs attack Hillary to promote their agendas and increase their pitiful level of influence. All of these sustained and across the board attacks are at best annoying at worse dispiriting. But they are necessary.

Hillary has taken on a great series of tasks. Whether it is passing Universal Health Care or stopping the war in Iraq, or strengthening and growing the economy, increasing employment opportunities, creating jobs, comprehensive immigration reform, defending the nation, the tasks are great and there will be a lot of opposition.

We are grateful that Hillary has taken on these tasks. We are grateful that she is surrounded by Bill and Chelsea and the Hillary Team of Mark and Mandy and Patti and well all who work so hard to get her elected.

Hillary will be the 44th American President. The trials she endures now will make her a stronger and better leader. Yes, she has been tried and tested for 35 years. But Hillary has a lot of work to do and a large agenda. The job will not end when she is elected president. That's when the job begins - for all of us.