THAT'S FINE WITH ME JOHN!

FOR MY OWN AMUSEMENT

I just can't stop laughing. Anytime I need a pick me up my beloved Bill always succeeds in cheering me up.

A GOVERNOR MET A PROSTITUTE...

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer

Ok. Everyone and there mammy should have heard the news about Mr. I love prostitutes up there. If you haven't youre very fortunate. As I read this "scandal" and heard all sides from sunday. I had to ask myself how do I feel about it. My conclusion? Who gives a fuck. The only person he should have to answer to is his wife as far as I am concerned, but then of course I am reminded that prostitution is illegal in this country. Which leads me to a whole new train of thought. Why is it illegal again? it sure as hell ain't for moralistic reasons. Most likely it is due to the fact that the government can't get any money out of the deal so therefore its illegal, but should it be? its just two consenting adults having a meeting "albeit a dirty one" and going about there business. Personally I think it should be legal. There I said it. Many other countries (with some restrictions that aren't that bad) in Canada, most all of Europe including England, France, Wales, Denmark, etc., most of South America including most of Mexico (often in special zones), Israel (Tel Aviv known as the brothel capital of the world), Australia, and many others have gone with the flow. What's america's problem again? by legalizing i they can tax the whole businiess make it more orderly and citizens won't have to constantly complain about there children's seeing hookers on the corner or seeing one getting beat up. Of course the main one would be the politicians. In this case if prostituion was legal then the Gov up above would not be having any legal problems. I think its ridiculous really. Personally I could give a damn what politicians do in there private lives as long as there keepin my state/country safe I could give a damn. There personal lives and decisions are just that. Personal and in this case unfortunatly illegal. Just my two cents.

ARE YOU SAYING YOU DON"T WANNA JOIN FORCES?

As race heads to Mississippi, Obama mocks VP talk

by Evelina Shmukler 1 hour, 31 minutes ago

BILOXI, Mississippi (AFP) - Democratic front-runner Barack Obama headed into Tuesday's primary in Mississippi, a state he is tipped to win, mocking talk of a "dream ticket" headed by his White House rival Hillary Clinton.

Obama, who leads by about 100 delegates after 45 Democratic contests, ridiculed verbal gymnastics by the Clinton camp arguing that he is not ready to be commander-in-chief, but could be her number two.

"If I'm not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?" he said, drawing laughter from raucous supporters at a rally Monday in Columbus, Mississippi.The Illinois senator said the Clinton team was "trying to hoodwink you.""With all due respect, I've won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I've won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton," he said.

"So I don't know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who's in first place.

"

Heaping psychological pressure on Obama, Clinton surrogates are pushing the "dream ticket" scenario as a way of resolving a nailbiting race that risks going down to the wire at the Democrats' nominating convention in August.

Speaking here Saturday, former president Bill Clinton argued that a presidential ballot headed by his wife, with Obama in the junior role, would be an "almost unstoppable force."But the former first lady has also sought to undermine Obama's bid by casting doubt on his credentials to be supremo of the world's most powerful military.

Clinton backers including General Wesley Clark, an ex-commander of NATO, went on a conference call Monday to belittle Obama's ability to take on Republican John McCain, a senator and Vietnam war hero, in November's election.Having sealed the Republican nomination last week, McCain is heading to Israel, Britain and France next week to hone his national-security credentials while the Democrats slug it out.

Obama's campaign, stressing Clinton's vote in 2002 authorizing military force in Iraq, hit back by parading former secretaries of the navy, army and air force at a Washington press conference in support of his White House bid.Clinton aides were pressed on how she could argue that Obama might be fit for vice president -- and just a heartbeat from promotion to the Oval Office -- but incompetent for the top job.

"The answer to that is that Senator Clinton will not choose any candidate who has not at the time of choosing passed the national security threshold. Period," spokesman Howard Wolfson said.

"But we have a long way to go between now and Denver, and it is not something that she would rule out at this point," he said, while not spelling out how Obama might pass the commander test in time for the convention.

Clinton breathed new life into her faltering campaign with wins last week in Ohio and Texas, helped by an ominous television advertisement that questioned whether Obama was ready to deal with a hypothetical crisis in the dead of the night.Obama grabbed some momentum back on Saturday with a landslide win in Wyoming, but emerged from the caucuses with a net gain of only two delegates over Clinton.Neither can reach the winning line of 2,025 delegates, even if Florida and Michigan go ahead with emerging plans to repeat their contests after running afoul of the national party for holding their primaries early.

So barring a backroom deal prior to the convention, the nomination will rest in the hands of nearly 800 "superdelegates," Democratic luminaries who are under enormous pressure from the two campaigns to sway one way or another

Polls give the African-American Obama anything from a six- to 24-point edge in Mississippi, where more than half of Democratic voters are black. Voting to elect the state's 33 delegates was to open at 1200 GMT and end 12 hours later.

Both Obama and Clinton have outlined plans to help rebuild communities on Mississippi's Gulf Coast that were obliterated by Hurricane Katrina in mid-2005. The former first lady is already looking past the Magnolia State to the far bigger battleground of Pennsylvania, a blue-collar state whose 158 delegates are up for grabs on April 22.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080311/wl_afp/usvote_080311060629

WHO GETS WHAT

Top 5 Questions: Tuesday's Mississippi Primaries

By Rachel Kapochunas, CQ Staff Mon Mar 10, 12:14 AM ET

1. What's at stake?

After Clinton's Ohio and Texas victories, each of Mississippi's 40 Democratic delegates became precious to both Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Seven of them are unpledged superdelegates, free to support the candidate of their choosing. The other 33 will be allocated proportionally to the candidates based on their primary results, so both Obama and Clinton will pick up a portion of Mississippi delegates.
In addition, there are Congressional primaries.

2. Who is favored to win Tuesday?
Political analysts believe that Obama will win the state, and recent polls support that theory.
Obama has drawn strong support from African-American voters and, according to American Research Group, 55 percent of Mississippi's likely Democratic voters are black. In Ohio's March 4 primary, 18 percent of Democratic voters identified themselves as African American, and 87 percent of them supported Obama over Clinton, according to exit polls.

Clinton has been campaigning in the state, but she has also dispatched her husband, former President Bill Clinton, to make the Mississippi campaign rounds. The former president had strong ties to the black community and was commonly referred to as the nation's "first black president." But he angered some black voters earlier this year when he likened Obama's South Carolina primary victory to Jesse Jackson's primary successes in the state. Some believed Clinton was attempting to dismiss Obama's win due solely to his race.

3. Since John McCain has clinched the Republican nomination, what might happen on the GOP side?

Republicans expect lower voter turnout Tuesday, due to an uncontested top-of-ticket race. But since voters do not register by party in Mississippi, it is possible that some Republicans may show up just to cast ballots in the more intriguing Democratic primary. And some will still be heading to the polls to cast ballots in the presidential race and to participate in the state's regularly scheduled congressional and Senate primary elections.

more here:http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20080310/pl_cq_politics/politics2684468

This is by far the dumbest thing I have ever heard. EVERY state in my opinion should have everyone registered by party. If I was a smart republican and wanted to play by strategy I can get over in these states. If I want my party to win all I have to do is vote for a democrat that is most likely to lose in the general election against my party. Therefore sabotaging the democrats for my candidate to get ahead. Boom my party wins. This is the most idiotic system ever. This is precisely what Rush Limbaugh has encouraged republicans to do. Vote for Hillary because according to polls she is likely to lose the general election to Mccain because of systems like this. Surprise Surprise that according to the demographics showed in Texas many republicans voted for clinton like never before. Its all about strategy in this case. November really cannot come no quicker.

PLOT THICKENS

GIRL IN CLINTON AD SUPPORTS OBAMA

Girl in Clinton's '3 a.m.' ad is now 17 and supports Obama; calls ad 'fear-mongering'

Casey Knowles didn't much like a recent campaign commercial for Hillary Clinton _ even though she's in it as a sleeping 8-year-old.

After all, she about to turn 18 now and is a big supporter of Barack Obama.

"What I don't like about the ad is its fear-mongering," Knowles told ABC's "Good Morning America Weekend Edition" on Sunday. "I think it's a cheap hit to take. I really prefer Obama's message of looking forward to a bright future."

The well-known Clinton ad aired in Texas before last week's vote and implied a lack of experience on Obama's part. It showed an exterior of a Colonial-style home and old stock footage of Knowles sleeping in bed. A narrator describes a phone ringing in the White House: "It's 3 a.m. and your children are safely asleep. Who do you want answering the phone?"

Clinton won the Texas primary by a 51-47 percent margin.

Knowles said she didn't see the ad until Jon Stewart lampooned it Thursday on "The Daily Show." Her brother noticed it was her, and the family replayed the commercial on their digital recorder to be sure.

"They were parodying this ad, kind of poking fun at it," Knowles said. "My brother was like, 'Is that Casey?' And we just erupted. Sure enough, it's me."

The file footage was originally shot for a railroad company advertisement. The Clinton campaign bought it from Getty Images.

Knowles, a senior at Bonney Lake High School who turns 18 next month, has been campaigning for Obama. She attended his rally at Seattle's KeyArena on Feb. 8. Her mother, Pam, told The News Tribune of Tacoma that Casey cried and trembled after shaking the candidate's hand.

The next day, she was a Democratic precinct captain for the state's caucuses. If she plays her cards right, she could go to the national convention.

Not to mention that she could be in another ad. After her identity became known, Obama's campaign contacted her.

"I mentioned that we should make a counter ad, me and Obama, against Hillary," she said. "They thought that was really funny. They actually might take me up on it."


Source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/120274/page/1

MADAM CLINTON GETS HER ENDORSEMENT ON

(Mayor Michael Anothony Nutter)

Philadelphia Mayor's Endorsement Suddenly Matters

By Chris Cillizza And Shailagh Murray

On paper, Michael Nutter and Sen. Barack Obama have much in common.

African American, 50 years old and elected last year as mayor of Philadelphia on a reform platform, Nutter has in many ways experienced a political rise similar to that of the Illinois Democrat vying for his party's presidential nomination.

But presidential elections aren't fought on paper, and Nutter isn't a supporter of Obama's. Instead, he has endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and insisted in an interview late last week with The Fix that she is well positioned to clean up in both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in general when the Democratic race makes its way there on April 22.


"There's the regular season, and then there's the playoffs," Nutter said of the nomination fight. "We're now in the playoffs." Extending the football metaphor, Nutter compared Obama to the New England Patriots, who were undefeated during the regular season and the playoffs, and Clinton to the New York Giants, who ended that winning streak in the Super Bowl.
Like so many politicians who cut their teeth in the 1990s, Nutter has a long history with the Clintons. In the early part of that decade, Nutter became involved in the Democratic Leadership Council, whose leading voice was then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. During Clinton's 1992 presidential bid, Nutter served as a pledged delegate for, in his words, "an unknown governor of the poorest state in America." (Left unsaid in the interview was that in Nutter's 2007 mayoral bid, Obama endorsed Rep. Chaka Fattah, who wound up finishing fourth.)

Despite that history, Nutter said he weighed his options carefully before deciding to endorse either candidate. He spoke with Obama and Clinton several times, knowing that he wanted to make an endorsement. ("You are either on the field or on the sidelines," Nutter said. "I am an on-the-field guy.") In the end, he went with Clinton because "I thought she had the best ideas [and a] tremendous track record."

Nutter's endorsement of Clinton in December seemed inconsequential at the time. After all, no one in the political world believed the race would last beyond Feb. 5, Super Tuesday.But, as the race has gone on (and on), Pennsylvania has become more and more relevant, and Nutter has emerged as a far more central figure in the ongoing debate over whether black elected officials should line up behind Obama and his potentially history-making candidacy.

Asked how much pressure he has come under to reconsider his endorsement of Clinton, Nutter responds curtly "none" before noting: "I don't know if anyone is asking Senator Kennedy or Senator Kerry, who happen to be white, whether they are getting any pressure from their constituents for their endorsement of Senator Obama."


Nutter takes it as a point of personal pride that he plans to stick with Clinton no matter what the future holds for her candidacy. "I take my time, think about what I am doing and then stick with it," he said. "I don't care whether it's just me and them left.

"Given Clinton's victories last week in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island, Pennsylvania looks like fertile territory for her, although Philadelphia -- a city that is 45 percent black -- could be far tougher.


Nutter, however, is optimistic, pointing out that in his 2007 Democratic primary victory he won both the white vote and the black vote, the first mayoral candidate in the city's history to do so.
"We feel a certain sense of freedom and progressiveness here," Nutter said of the City of Brotherly Love. "The notion that all black people vote one way has to be destroyed."



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802244.html

A REPUBLICAN GETS THE BOOT

I GOT SERVED!

OBAMA BACKER WINS HOUSE SEAT IN REPUBLICAN STRONGHOLD

CHICAGO - A longtime Republican district fell to the Democrats yesterday when a scientist snatched former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's congressional seat in a closely watched special election.

Democrat Bill Foster won 52 percent of the vote, compared with 48 percent for Republican Jim Oberweis. With 564 of 568 precincts reporting, Foster had 50,947 votes to Oberweis' 46,125.

Foster's victory means he will fill the remainder of Hastert's term, which ends in January. The two will square off again in November for a full term.

The 66-year-old Hastert, who lost his post as speaker when Democrats took control of Congress, resigned late last year.

The race between Foster and Oberweis spawned a contentious campaign that saw both men turn to high-profile supporters to help sway voters in the longtime GOP district.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama made a TV ad praising Foster; Oberweis had fundraising help from the apparent Republican nominee, John McCain, and Hastert's backing.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who is chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in a statement, "It is a stunning rejection of the Bush administration, its Republican allies, and presidential nominee John McCain."

The district will have a rookie congressmen after years of enjoying Hastert's influence.

During his 21 years in Washington, Hastert funneled millions of dollars to the district that stretches from Chicago's far western suburbs almost to the Mississippi River.

Foster and Oberweis had clashed on issues from immigration and health care to the Iraq war.

During a recent TV appearance, Foster said he would be a "good vote in Congress to change President Bush's policy" on Iraq.

Source: http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Obama_backer_wins_House_seat_in_Rep_03092008.html

IT'S BECAUSE I'M BLACK RIGHT?

OBAMA'S BLACK SUPPORT SHOWS ITS LIMITS

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press CHICAGO - Barack Obama would not be leading the Democratic presidential race without the enthusiasm and high turnout of black voters.

They spearheaded his comeback win in South Carolina, where Obama trounced Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards with the backing of four out of every five black voters. They provided his margin of victory in many other states, and will play a key role in Tuesday's primary in Mississippi, where Clinton is the underdog.

But Obama's campaign saw the limits of black support in last week's losses in Ohio and Texas, which kept Clinton's campaign alive. And the role black voters will play in the next big contest, Pennsylvania's April 22 primary, is unclear.Moreover, some analysts think it's possible Obama's heavy black support is nudging some working-class white Democrats into Clinton's camp. If true, it could be an important factor in a contest that remains remarkably tight after a year of campaigning.

Obama, the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, won slightly more white votes than Clinton in Wisconsin, Virginia and a few other states last month, helping him to a string of wins and the overall lead in delegates to the party's national convention.
But Clinton won nearly two out of every three white votes in Ohio, and 56 percent of those in Texas, where she also ran well among Latinos. Strategists are pondering the results, wondering if Pennsylvania's demographic similarities to Ohio will deliver another important win to Clinton in six weeks.

Ronald Walters, a University of Maryland political scientist who tracks racial trends and is writing a book on Obama, thinks Obama's strong support from blacks made it easier for some whites in Ohio and Texas to vote for Clinton.

"There's some of that," Walters said in an interview. He pointed to exit polls from Ohio, where 62 percent of all whites lack college degrees and many are anxious about their jobs in a weak economy.
"This is a racially sensitive group," he said, referring specifically to whites who earn less than $50,000 a year and did not attend college.
"They are the quintessential Reagan Democrats," he said. "They feel they've been left" and their resentment can have social and racial overtones.

Ohio exit polls support Walters' view. Eighteen percent of white Ohio voters said race was an important factor in their decision, and of that group, three in four voted for Clinton.
In general elections, which pit Democrats against Republicans, the racial sensitivity of white voters has been pronounced and well-documented for decades. It's a chief cause of the realignment of the South, where blacks remained intensely loyal to the Democratic Party as whites moved to the GOP by the millions.In the intraparty world of Democratic primaries, however, racial divisions are much less prevalent, and hard to measure. Many white Democrats, especially in the South, tend to be liberal, racially tolerant and usually happy to join blacks in opposing Republicans.

The Obama-Clinton rivalry may be straining that comity. Some blacks resented remarks Clinton made in New Hampshire, which they viewed as minimizing Martin Luther King Jr.'s role in achieving landmark civil rights laws. And after Obama's South Carolina victory on Jan. 26, former President Clinton seemed to equate the Illinois senator with Jesse Jackson as a candidate who could not draw widespread white support. Many blacks felt the Clintons "were trying to use race to their political advantage, to cede the black vote to Obama and take the rest," said David Bositis, senior political analyst for the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which tracks issues important to black Americans.

The Clintons said they intended no slights, and many blacks still hold great affection for the former president and his eight-year term. But Hillary Clinton's sharp-elbowed campaign is alienating others, Bositis said, and it could hurt the New York senator in November if she becomes the nominee.

Bositis said it was unclear whether Obama's black support is driving some working-class whites into Clinton's corner, but he noted the steep drop in Obama's share of the white vote in Ohio compared to Wisconsin. One possible factor other than race, Bositis said, was Clinton's strong support within the Ohio Democratic establishment, starting with the governor.
One thing is not in doubt: Obama's candidacy and the closeness of the contest are triggering record turnout among black voters. "In many states, the black vote has doubled," Bositis said.
Similar turnout in Philadelphia's black neighborhoods could help Obama next month. But he would have to make deeper inroads into Pennsylvania's white electorate than he did in Ohio if he is to avoid another solid defeat. Meanwhile, Clinton continues to draw about 10 percent to 20 percent of black voters, who sometimes have to defend their choice.

"She has the most experience," said Elexis Griffin, a black worker at a law office who attended a Clinton fundraiser in Canton, Ohio. "Obama has only been in the Senate three years. I'm not anti-Barack. I'm just pro-Hillary." Griffin, who is 25 and considering law school, said, "I sit here almost every single day and hear debating: Hillary or Obama? My closest friends, I have very much influenced their vote for Hillary. They accuse me of being against the social movement. And I accuse them of voting with their emotions and not looking at the facts."

Story Source http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Sen-Barack-Obama-Laramie-Boomerang/photo//080308/480/104c89c79b7345d99132652c70fed056//s:/ap/20080309/ap_on_el_pr/democrats_blacks;_ylt=AsbcOqGBbH2meIJkLku3G0Nh24cA