In honor of “never say quit” Coleman:

EzraKlein Voter Fraud Fraud | The American Prospect

CNN has been running a story about bogus voter regsitrations by ACORN today. They emphasize invalid registration forms without balance. ACORN, or any organization that assists voter registrations, must turn in every form. This includes incomplete and obviously bogus forms. ACORN separates and labels these problem forms before turning them in. Republicans then scream about bogus registration forms without noting that turning them in is required and that they were labeled. It’s an attempt to attack the legitimacy of the election and the subsequent administration that arises from nasty turn the polls are taking against the GOP. It’s part and parcel of the usual election year voter suppression tactics so beloved by Republicans. Also, note that the registrations do not constitute election fraud in the first place. An illegal vote has to be cast before election fraud can exist.  The point is to leverage these accusations into a new round of voter requirements that would disproportionately impact likely Democratic voters. Cases of actual voter fraud are very few, against tens of millions of votes cast in federal elections. The DOJ reports that only 24 cases were brought from 2002 to 2005 after they claimed that voter fraud was a high priority. There’s a better chance of being struck by lightning.

Update: Josh Marshall at TPM ties all the voter fraud nonsense to the US Attorney firing scandal. The point of the firings were to get people in place who would prosecute non-existent voter fraud claims and further GOP vote suppression efforts.

No racism in McCain-Palin supporters? Don’t be silly, they’d never tolerate racism, would they?

She’s playing the same game (and playing it very well)  as every local or state official. The part that rankles is that she flatly and regularly lies about it.

The domestic drilling issue in a nutshell.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Gallup still shows no change. Im beginning to suspect that the only segment left in America that genuinely feels that elitism is a problem for Obama are … the elites. How funny is that?

Washington Wire – WSJ.com : Are You Better Off Than You Were Five Years Ago?
For the first time in 50 years of polling, a majority of Americans believe they are stuck or falling behind, according to a new Pew Research poll measuring the attitudes of the middle class…

…But looking at the shorter term, Pew said real median household income peaked in 1999 “making this decade one of the longest downturns ever for this widely-accepted measure of the middle-class standard of living.”

Who knows? It might happen, the Democratic Congressional Caucus might just grow some spine in the next Congress.

TPM Election Central | Talking Points Memo |
We have been strong supporters of the DCCC. We therefore urge you to clarify your position on super-delegates and reflect in your comments a more open view to the optional independent actions of each of the delegates at the National Convention in August. We appreciate your activities in support of the Democratic Party and your leadership role in the Party and hope you will be responsive to some of your major enthusiastic supporters.

Give me a fucking break, are these people willing to shoot the party in the head so Hillary can satisfy her ambition and gargantuan sense of entitlement? The longer this primary goes on the greater my feeling of revulsion for the Clintons and their supporters.

Update: The Carpetbagger Report has more on the thuggery of Clinton supporters.

“I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia,” she said, in remarks that aides described Monday as not being part of her prepared speech. “I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Take a look at the video. No running with heads down, no bullets snapping the ground around them, no snipers. Maybe the school girl in the greeting party waiting on the tarmac was a really, really well disguised sniper. And I have to ask, why in God’s name would she have brought Chelsea on such a “dangerous” mission. Like the CBS reporter says, you better make your speech match the video tape.

Update: Olbermann had a segement on Countdown last night called BS-NIA CONFLICT. How apropos is that?

The Long Defeat – New York Times
First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.

Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.

Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.

Oh snap! I’d like to believe the Clinton campaign has died, but I don’t they’ll be out until someone drives a stake into both of their hearts, beheads them and burns the bodies. Their ambition may break the party first.

Krugman nails exactly what I was thinking when I heard that Clinton wants Greenspan on a blue ribbon commission to find a solution to the mortgage crisis. Hey, let’s appoint Wiley E. Coyote to build effective road-runner traps! That will solve everything!! Hooray, let’s all go back to our over-leveraged homes to celebrate!!! Oh wait, the Sheriff has put our stuff out in the street.

UPDATED: McCain makes a major mistake about a very basic Iraq issue — two days in a row – AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

He just shot himself in the foot, twice. There’s another example with audio from the Hugh Hewitt radio show. Are we gonna leave him in charge of the really big guns? Seriously, this kind of mistake shows a profound misunderstanding of the situation of the kind with the mistakes that got us in Iraq in the first place. So, was he that monumentally ignorant or have his 71 years caught up with him? Either way it’s not what I want to see from someone who wants to make the decisions in the Oval Office. He did serious damage to the central theme of his candidacy: that John McCain is the voice of knowledge and experience on national security issues. Not so much…

Do-over primary getting lost in the mail – 03/13/2008 – MiamiHerald.com
Florida law prohibits election officials from authenticating votes cast in the Democratic Party’s proposed do-over primary by mail, state officials said Thursday, a potentially fatal blow to the increasingly embattled plan.

”There’s no authority under Florida law that would allow county supervisors of election or the state to verify signatures in an election of a state party,” said Sterling Ivey, a spokesman for Florida’s secretary of state and Division of Elections.

Verifying the identity of anyone who votes by mail — either through a conventional absentee ballot or in the Florida Democrats’ proposed and unprecedented statewide mailed election — is considered a key bulwark against electoral fraud.

In addition, the plan floated Wednesday by state party chief Karen Thurman lacked a key requirement to protect the anonymity of voters — an inner ”secrecy envelope,” though aides said Thursday that the envelope would be included if the proposal gains momentum.

Florida’s Mail-In Primary Plan Opens Rifts in Washington and Tallahassee – washingtonpost.com
Florida officials have struggled to come up with a way to redo a January primary that was invalidated by the Democratic National Committee because it was held too early in the process. Opponents of the plan, which could be unveiled as early as today, fear that it would disenfranchise voters and cause another fiasco in a state still haunted by the debacle of the 2000 presidential election.

How Florida and Michigan, which is also considering how to redo its primary, resolve their situations has become a critical issue in the nomination battle between Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) because the states carry enough delegates and stature to potentially sway the deadlocked race.

Clinton took a hard line on the controversy yesterday, saying she would absolutely not accept a negotiated apportionment of Florida’s delegates, as the state’s House delegation has suggested. Her win Jan. 29 would give her a net gain of 38 delegates, cutting Obama’s 106-delegate lead by more than a third.

Clinton and Obama Split Over Florida and Michigan – New York Times
“The results of those primaries were fair and should be honored,” she told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here.

Ferraro defends controversial comments on Barack Obama – The Daily Breeze
“Any time anybody does anything that in any way pulls this campaign down and says let’s address reality and the problems we’re facing in this world, you’re accused of being racist, so you have to shut up,” Ferraro said. “Racism works in two different directions. I really think they’re attacking me because I’m white. How’s that?”

She should probably gone with the ever popular “no comment” until after the election. Gerry, you probably ought to shut up now, you ain’t helping!!!

So will Hillary embrace this narrative and become the campaign of down trodden white people? Remember kids, we’re on 231 year streak of white people running the country. I’m going to get physically ill if the Hilldog embraces her “victimhood”.

Mutual Contempt
Though they differ in many ways, John McCain and Barack Obama have one thing in common: Each sees the other as a posturing phony. When McCain talks about Obama on the stump, he trades his typical graciousness for sarcasm and contempt. When McCain lectured Obama about the future of Iraq last week, he did so with what The New York Times called “a tone of belittlement in his voice.” McCain has also called Obamamania a swindle. “America is not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history,” he said in Wisconsin last month. And he has huffed that “I don’t seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with personal greatness.” After Obama issued a press release last May noting that conditions were still dangerous enough in Iraq that McCain had been forced to wear a “flack jacket” during a public tour of a Baghdad market, a McCain release taunted Obama for his inexperience, adding, “By the way, Senator Obama, it’s a ‘flak’ jacket, not a ‘flack’ jacket.” For good measure, an unnamed McCain aide drove home the point to the Politico, saying that “Obama wouldn’t know the difference between an RPG and a bong.”

Obama has swung back in similar, if somewhat milder, fashion. Noting that McCain had changed his position on the Bush tax cuts, Obama joked last month that “the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels.” Later, he cracked in a Democratic debate that McCain “traded his principles for his party’s nomination.” Snickering at the idea that McCain is a scourge of lobbyists, Obama recently said that “he takes their money and has put them in charge of his campaign.”

He’s in has the democratic nominee for a Senate seat from Minnesota.  He’s good enough, smart enough and doggonit people like him. (Stoopid youtube failed me, not a single clip of Al Franken doing Stuart Smalley on SNL)

Mike Dorning and Christi Parsons at the Chicago Trib do job on the experience meme pushed by the Hillary camp.