It is often counted a deficiency in our politics that voters rely on personal impressions when they choose a President. Maybe we do cut too much slack for the candidate we would, as the saying goes, like to have a beer with. On the other hand, if we perceive that a candidate would happily confiscate our beer and jail us for violating the Open Container Law, it would just be common sense to deny him our support.

Yes, yes, we are. In fact, we're probably even more stupid than you can possibly imagine. After all, we're too stupid to realize that when we worry that the Republicans say we're weak, we are being weak; too stupid to realize that when you consent to an Attorney General who won't say whether waterboarding is torture, you get an AG who says later that waterboarding is not torture if it's done to the right people; too stupid to realize that people want us to confront Bush more, not less; too stupid to realize that Hillary voted for the war with Iraq and another possible war with Iran; too stupid to realize that the Clintons both supported limited torture until the polls said otherwise; too stupid to realize that the Clintons are totally unethical (and why? because Bill is so damned charming!); too stupid to recognize that Bill Clinton sold us all out (I'm sorry, but gays and lesbians were not the only ones to give hand over fist only to be disappointed); too stupid to realize that 50% of the country will never vote for Hillary; too stupid to realize that we've got our Reagan, the reincarnate of JFK, staring us in the face; and too stupid to realize that, for the first time that I can think of, the most liberal candidate is the one that is most acceptable to independents and Republicans.

We don't deserve to win this election if we don't nominate Obama. And you'll see a lot of Democrats like me abandon the party if we don't. Just watch. It's hard to keep associating yourself with this kind of ineptitude.

Edwards out means Nader in. In the same hour as news of Edwards' withdrawal, CounterPunch received an alert from Nader's camp, which had tactfully waited 30 seconds after Edwards's exit, to announce the formation of "the Nader 2008 presidential exploratory committee". Yes, there's already a website, www.naderexplore08.org.

Proposition C is a call to "convert" Alcatraz into a "Global Peace Center." The idea being that Alcatraz gives off negative vibes and so should be replaced by an "International Conference Center For Non-Violent Conflict Resolution" which will send forth such positive vibes that there will be no more war, violence will cease to exist, and the writers strike will end so we can get a full season of "Lost" in. To help usher in all this peace, the center will also include a "Harmonium", a "multi- media facility of Laser Light, holographic sound, and fragrance" that will shoot out holographs into the Bay and have it look much like how it's depicted here in these posters (warning-- contains New Age-y-ness). All of this is depicted in this nine minute YouTube clip that also features massive New Age-y-ness

The idea is the brainstorm of the Light Party's founder, Da Vid (yes, that's his real name). Opposing it are merchants at Fisherman's Wharf who think they'll lose money due to the in tourism (sic), CADAR (Citizens Against Dumbass Resolutions), as well as pretty much everyone who doesn't listen to whale songs on a regular basis.

America is blessed - very blessed. We have had an amazing leader who believes in the wisdom of ‘we the people’. Through 7 years of attack from within and without. from across the aisle and from those too obsessed with purity in his party, President Bush has been a stalwart gentleman who has maintained dignity and honor for his office as those around him have collapsed into angry rants. The nation is going to miss George W Bush.

His SOTU speech tonight was probably his best. And it rested upon 7 years of accomplishments only his enemies, in hopes of diminishing him, will never recognize. He has shown that being a lame duck with a veto pen is a might powerful position to be in. He has promised to veto tax increases and uncontrolled earmarks. He will direct no efforts be spent on earmarks that had no debate or public vote in Congress.

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The hyper-partisans left and right were thrust into bold relief tonight by a man who spent 7 years finding progress and making things happen. To the crowd which equated compromise as being a traitor (so were dems traitors to support our war efforts after 9-11?) he is their bane. He is the man who makes great things happen with out belittling others. We will miss you George W Bush. You brought honor and dignity to us, even though too many left and right were unable to (a) recognize this and (b) build upon it. While some refuse to see your gift and in fact work to destroy it many, many more do see it and will work to build upon it. We are the RINOs and DINOs and independents - and we are not beholding to party, we give our pledge of allegiance to America.

We will keep the State Of The Union strong.

Richardson's torn. He served in the Clinton White House, first as ambassador to the United Nations, then as Clinton's Secretary of Energy. "I have a history with the Clintons," Richardson said. "And I've always liked her. She always seems very genuine." But Richardson considers Kennedy, who's long been respected by Hispanics, as "a mentor." In 1982, when Richardson ran for Congress for the second time -- he lost two years before -- Kennedy flew to Santa Fe and campaigned for him. "That might have been the reason I was elected," Richardson said. And he said he likes Obama, telling a story about how Obama saved him during one of last year's Democratic debates:

"I had just been asked a question -- I don't remember which one -- and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn't going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, 'So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?' But I wasn't paying any attention! I was about to say, 'Could you repeat the question? I wasn't listening.' But I wasn't about to say I wasn't listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, 'Katrina. Katrina.' The question was on Katrina! So I said, 'On Katrina, my policy . . .' Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, 'Obama, that was good of you to do that.'"

Make no mistake: What happened in South Carolina today was a moral reprimand delivered to Bill and Hillary Clinton by a united Democratic Party--but especially by the African-American segment of that party.

I chased the Clintons around South Carolina yesterday and the absence of black faces at their rallies was striking--eerie almost, the absence a palpable presence, as if the rooms were filled with ghosts. In Penn Center on St. Helena Island, which has been a historic nexus of the civil rights movement going back to the civil war--a place where Martin Luther King Jr would sometimes go to live in a rude cabin, and to write and think--Bill Clinton looked out on a lily-white crowd and he must have known what he was seeing: a silent, decorous protest against him by a segment of the Democratic Party that was always there for him in the past, the churchified African-American middle class, a group that represents the Democrats' canary in the coal mine when it comes to injustice.

A mass, unspoken decision had been made that Bill and Hillary Clinton had behaved unjustly toward Barack Obama. It was the sort of decision that Bill Clinton might have tried to argue with, if it had come from the presss: "Hell, that Reagan thing...c'mon that's the kind of thing Republicans do to us all the time. Barack's gonna have to get used to it if he wants to play in the big leagues..." Except he had pulled the Reagan thing--trying to make it seem as if Obama had said that Reagan's ideas were better ideas--with the wrong audience...and I don't just mean black people, I mean an entire political party sick of games-playing.

CHARLESTON, SC—After spending two months accompanying his wife, Hillary, on the campaign trail, former president Bill Clinton announced Monday that he is joining the 2008 presidential race, saying he "could no longer resist the urge."

"My fellow Americans, I am sick and tired of not being president," said Clinton, introducing his wife at a "Hillary '08" rally. "For seven agonizing years, I have sat idly by as others experienced the joys of campaigning, debating, and interacting with the people of this great nation, and I simply cannot take it anymore. I have to be president again. I have to."

"Damn, this feels good," Clinton told supporters as he shook hands in Charleston Monday.

He continued, "It is with a great sense of relief that I say to all of you today, 'Screw it. I'm in.'"

In a show of respect, Clinton then completed his introduction of Hillary Clinton, calling her a "wonderful wife and worthy political adversary," and warmly shook her hand as she approached the podium. A clearly shocked Mrs. Clinton got halfway through her speech about the nation's obligation to its children before walking briskly offstage.

A spokesman for Sen. Clinton's campaign had no comment.

For the life of me, I can’t understand the nostalgia some of my Democratic friends proclaim for the Clinton Years. Yes, the economy boomed – at least during the second half of the 90s — fueled by rampant speculation kicked off by Clinton-led deregulation of the financial markets. By 2001, this Dot.Com Gold Rush led to Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco and has now bequeathed us the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

If FDR gave us the New Deal. Clinton gave us “the end of welfare as we know it,” including the elimination of AFDC, the only federal subsidy for children, and creation of Welfare to Work, a shell game that has left the poor in this country worse off than they were before.

If LBJ gave us the Civil Rights Act and the Great Society, Clinton gave us “Sister Soljah” and NAFTA and all its epigones. Promoted with claims that it would create millions of new jobs throughout the hemisphere, it has instead caused the flight of industrial jobs from this country while displacing millions of Mexican and Central Americans from their jobs and farms. Estimates are that the number of undocumented workers who have crossed our southern border over the last 15 years is exactly the same number who lost their livelihoods as a result of NAFTA. The nastiness of the immigration debate, therefore, is a direct legacy of the Clinton Years.

If JFK gave us the Apollo Project, Clinton gave us the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which, in the name of fostering competition, opened the doors to a wave of media consolidation that threatens our very right to be informed. Want a good measure of the Clinton legacy? In 1996, Clear Channel Communications, the scumbag Texas-based corporation with close ties to G.W. Bush, owned 45 radio stations in the southwest. Today, it owns 2,000 all over the country and is busy protecting us from the thought-crimes of The Dixie Chicks and other nemeses to our way of life.

Clintons may win again, but their reputation is in tatters. The unexpected result for me these primaries is that the right-wing brandishments all those years, even if heavily applied, wind up being true after all: the Clintons are power-mad, are not good people, are rather mean and self-interested, and leave bodies in their wake, any bodies at all, and soon to be Obama.

So forget about the Bill Clinton we've known for the past eight years -- the one who finds friendship and common ground with fellow former president George H.W. Bush (a Republican, last I heard), who dedicates most of his time and energy to the William J. Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, who speaks eloquently about global citizenship, environmental stewardship and economic empowerment. Forget about the statesman who uses appropriately measured language when talking about transient political events, focusing instead on the broad sweep of human history. Forget about the apostle of brotherhood and understanding whose most recent book is titled, simply, "Giving." That Bill Clinton has left the building.

There's a battle to be fought against an upstart challenger who has the audacity to suggest that maybe the Clinton presidency, successful as it was in many ways, didn't change the world -- and that he, given the office, could do better. Some things, I guess, just can't be allowed. Bill Clinton obviously has decided that history can wait.

But let's be clear -- Bill Clinton is spreading demonstrably false information.

There's winning ugly, and there's winning with honor.

Does it matter? Or is all fair in politics and war?

The bitter back-and-forth between former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama has led a prominent black lawmaker to tell the former president Monday to "chill a little bit."

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House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, one of the most powerful African Americans in Congress, weighed in on the feud Monday, saying it was time for Bill Clinton to watch his words.

Bill Clinton has delivered full-throated attacks on Obama in recent days, accusing him of overstating his opposition to the war in Iraq, complaining about Obama's union supporters in the Nevada caucuses last weekend and blasting his relatively mild praise for Republican icon Ronald Reagan during a Las Vegas newspaper interview.

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"I think they would say in 'Gullah Geechee' country he needs to chill a little bit. I hope he understands what that means," Clyburn told CNN.

"I can understand him wanting to defend his wife's honor and his own record, and that is to be expected. But you can't do that in a way that won't engender the kind of feelings that seem to be bubbling up as a result of this."

"Gullah Geechee" refers to African Americans who live in South Carolina's Low Country region near the Atlantic coast.

"He is revered in many sections of the African- American community, and I think he can afford to tone it down," Clyburn added.

The playing of the race card by Hillary Clinton’s surrogates to diminish Barack Obama was sinister.

Until Thursday, administration officials and many Republican lawmakers had made it clear that making Mr. Bush’s tax cuts permanent would be a priority for his last year in office. Those cuts include rate reductions for people at every income level and sharply lower tax rates on investment income.

Democratic leaders have been adamantly opposed to any such move, and most of the Democratic presidential candidates have called for rolling back the tax cuts at least for families that earn more than about $200,000 a year. But Democrats had worried that Republicans might try to hold a stimulus bill hostage to their demands on the Bush tax cuts.

Mr. Fratto, the president’s deputy press secretary, said Mr. Bush was as determined as ever to make his tax cuts permanent before he leaves office. But he said the issue of a short-term stimulus is a separate matter.

“The president supports a permanent extension of his tax cuts, and he supports a short-term growth package, but they are separate,” Mr. Fratto said.

But at this point, the practical impact of any support for Edwards is to help Clinton defeat Obama. Polling shows that the second choice of Edwards' followers is overwhelmingly Obama.

By staying in the race after he has lost any realistic chance of winning, Edwards is making it possible for Hillary to win and to bring with her precisely the policies he most opposes: dependence on special interests, a determination to maintain a presence in Iraq and a reversion to dynastic politics.

Obama told the Sun his favorite character is Omar, a stick-up artist who steals from drug dealers and then gives the loot to poor people in the neighborhood.

“That’s not an endorsement. He’s not my favorite person, but he’s a fascinating character.”

The more she's attacked on personal grounds, the more sympathy that real person will generate, the more votes she'll win from people sending a message to the media and her critics that they've gone way over the line of common decency. You underestimate that sympathy at your own peril. If I found myself half-rooting for her given the crap that was being flung at her, is it any wonder that women turned out in droves to send a message that sexist double-standards were unacceptable? Sure, it took one look at Terry McAuliffe's mug to bring me back down to earth, but most people don't know or care who McAuliffe is. They see people beating the shit out of Clinton for the wrong reasons, they get angry, and they lash back the only way they can -- by voting for her.

Based on what I was feeling, there were two turning points for Clinton in the past week. One was a report that people were chanting "Iron my shirt" at her during a rally. The other was John Edwards' idiotic statements about Clinton tearing up at an event. Mix that in with the subtle media digs at Clinton's gender in recent months (descrptions of what she's wearing, how she "emasculates" men, etc.), and I think you had a tremendous push back from women, and men, who are tired of the misogyny underlying this campaign. It swayed me toward Clinton the past few days, even as I cheered for an Obama coronation.

FAIRFIELD, Iowa -- In the run-up to today's caucuses in Iowa, candidates have had to scrutinize the issues that move voters here. In this town, many care less about immigration than meditation.

"Are you familiar with Transcendental Meditation?" Craig Berg, a bearded man in a faded parka, said as he buttonholed Republican candidate Fred Thompson during a recent campaign stop here.

Candidates typically arrive here prepared for that question. The campaign of Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware has let it be known here that his former chief of staff is an adherent of Transcendental Meditation. During an outdoor rally here last summer, Sen. Barack Obama turned his podium east out of respect for the Transcendental Meditation view that east is the natural direction of energy flow.

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Ahead of today's Iowa caucus, in which even a few dozen votes could tilt the race in many voting precincts, candidates have been making special pitches to demographics as small and eccentric as Fairfield's Transcendental Meditation community. Of this hamlet's 10,000 residents, barely a third of them are transcendental devotees. But their political influence is outsized. For the past six years the town has chosen as its mayor a Transcendental Meditation devotee named Ed Malloy.

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John Edwards visited the town this week, as did Mr. Richardson. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has scheduled -- and canceled -- three stops here, according to Mayor Malloy. The Clinton campaign didn't respond to a request for comment.

That seems to have helped Sen. Obama gain an edge. During his visit here last summer, Sen. Obama assured Mayor Malloy of the candidate's respect for Transcendental Meditation and the philosophy behind it. "He said he felt that if there was any candidate in the race to embrace this technique, he was that candidate,'' says Mayor Malloy.

The real Obama weapon, however, may be his wife, Michelle Obama. During a visit to Fairfield last month, she had several long conversations with the mayor's wife. "I think she and my wife are both very spiritual people,'' the mayor says.

Mrs. Obama's visit prompted the mayor to do something he'd never before done -- endorse a candidate. A few days after his introduction of Mrs. Obama at a Fairfield rally last week, Mayor Malloy publicly announced his endorsement of her husband. The winner of four consecutive elections, Mayor Malloy is influential throughout Fairfield.

Iowa is about as white a state as you can find and yet Obama won. After New Hampshire, race will enter the race and Obama stands to benefit. The idea that Bill Clinton was the first black president is the final insult to African-Americans from an administration that regularly emptied its septic tanker in their neighborhoods. Clinton scapegoated the poor with so-called welfare reform and its reintroduction of the idea that black people are here to do jobs we don't want to do, so as to justify their subsistence room and board. He made a point of leaving the 1992 campaign trail to make sure Ricky Ray Rector, an African-American man whose mental capabilities had been lobotomized by police bullets, was executed in Arkansas. Hillary stood by his side when he made this barbaric gesture. If Bill Clinton was the first black president, he was as self-loathing a black president as anyone could imagine. The fact is Bubba wasn't the first black president but Barack Obama is looking like he might legitimately fill the role.

Ben Franklin with the 12 galaxies' populations is guilty of stealing the sex lives, trying to deprive his enemies (the Soviet presidents and their friends) of their sex lives. Also the U.N. presidents. The owner of the12 Galaxies nightclub is probably Yelstin's son, too. I met Mark Hamill at the 12 Galaxies nightclub, and he introduced himself to me as Luke Skywalker. He wanted to identify me as a movie star, so he met me. 12 galaxies with the CIA is stealing sex with sex magic. The U.N presidents and their friends can counter that type of stealing with the KGB and they can take that sex life back for themselves. They could have their second wives, or a 1,000 wives. And they can enjoy sex with orgies too. The 12 galaxies are perverted, trying to murder god in the testicles, and trying to murder Lenin in the testicles, becoming the most jealous criminals across 100,000 galaxies. They can dissapear with telepathic inventions. They can use rocket vacations to their galaxies and other populations; it's like the American airlines.

The Movie was him from Russia with a Documentary across the U.S. a comedy with a partner, he was also controlled by The CIA, The White House, Behind Closed Doors, in Washington, with Clinton's Friends with Childished Treasons, forcing movements of Borat's, breaking the dishes in the antique shop.