I think the most important thing to note about the Jeremiah Wright Story is that we're a Nation plagued by exceedingly few significant problems; blessed with a quite healthy political culture and very trusted political and media institutions; composed of a citizenry that is peacefully content with its Government and secure and confident about their future; endowed with a supremely sturdy economic foundation free of debt and other grave economic afflictions; vested with the ability to command great respect and admiration from the other nations of the world; emancipated by the burdens of war and intractable conflicts which have toppled and destroyed so many other great nations of the past; and, most of all, we're becoming freer and more prosperous by the minute.

Not only that, but we have an extremely impressive, serious and honor-bound ruling imperial class devoted to the preservation of all of these blessings.

So it isn't as though we really have anything else to talk about besides Jeremiah Wright. There are some countries in the world -- probably most -- which have so many big problems that they could ill-afford to devote much time and energy to a matter of this sort. Thankfully, the United States isn't one of them. I believe it's critical that we keep that in mind as we discuss him for the next seven months.

Vivid Entertainment is releasing a sex tape allegedly starring Jimi Hendrix. The Los Angeles-based adult entertainment company said they obtained the footage of the music legend shot in a hotel room about 40 years ago from a memorabilia collector.

The footage features Hendrix engaging in various sexual acts with two women, according to a statement released by Vivid. The company said they consulted with several experts to authenticate the footage.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama has to do something drastic about all this -- maybe hit Wright with a blackjack, or go around dressed as Captain America. But under this kind of ridiculous hazing, there's really not much he can do. Though he may try and paint the corners now and again, Obama is clearly disinclined toward the grand renunciatory gestures the press has prescribed for him. I suspect he realizes that this course could fatally derail his Presidential run, but would rather fail going forward than in retreat.

We think of these crises as a test for Obama, but as things are currently playing out, they strike me as more of a test of our politics -- that is, of whether we are so fatally addicted to sideshows that we can't have a national election about even the most pressing national issues. Obama's political fortunes, or those of any candidate, are small potatoes compared to that.

With all the talk among the Democratic presidential hopefuls about change, they may wish to consider this as they wander Indiana: People here practically revolted a few years ago when their governor, Mitch Daniels, pushed to change to daylight saving time like most of the country.

Change, it seems, may not carry quite the same political magic in this state as it has elsewhere.

“We hold onto a lot of traditional values,” said Brian L. Thomas, 39, as he bought a cup of coffee along the courthouse square here on Wednesday. “Saying you’re ready to change is probably not the best or only thing you would want to say around these parts. Frankly, we want it to be like it used to be.”

Many of the two dozen voters interviewed in this central Indiana manufacturing city of 46,000 expressed queasiness over the notions of change that both Democratic candidates have proudly pledged elsewhere. Though residents bemoaned economic conditions that have taken away thousands of factory jobs and given the state the 11th-highest rate of foreclosures, they also said they worried about doing things — anything — very differently.

“What are we going to change to?” asked Ron O’Bryan, 58, a retired auto worker who said he was still trying to decide which Democrat to vote for in the May 6 primary. “You mean change to some other country’s system? What do you think they mean?”

Jeremy Lewis, a 28-year-old window washer, said simply, “Old-fashioned can be in a good way.”

Hillary must know that she cannot possibly win the nomination by any rational standard. Hence the comic moment on Tuesday when her finance chairman Terry McAuliffe was asked to define what Mrs Clinton would invoke as a fair claim on the Democratic nomination. McAuliffe said it would either be a victory in the popular vote in Democratic primaries and caucuses -- including Michigan and Florida – (a very remote contingency) or a lead in the pledged delegates (an impossibility) or a lead among Superdelegates (among whom, since March 6, HRC has collected 12 and Obama 88) or there would be a consensus among party leaders that Obama is incapable of beating McCain. Obama is still ahead of McCain, though thanks to Mrs Clinton’s efforts the margin is narrowing.

In other words there’s no rational scenario here, except the one suggested here by St Clair a month ago that her real aim is to ensure a McCain victory this year and come back in 2012.

In two weeks comes the Indiana primary which will probably be close. Obama is likely to win North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana and Oregon. Hillary will most likely win West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico. At the end of the day Obama ends up 150-160 pledged delegates ahead of her, and about a 500,000 edge in the popular vote. He will have won about 32 states against HRC’s 20.

So on we straggle.

"I don't care too much for Obama," Maria Norgren, the daughter and granddaughter of steelworkers, said in the parking lot of the Giant Eagle shopping center here, near the Obama rally.

"I don't even think he's American," added her husband, Edward, who lost his job when the steel mills closed and now mans the counter at the Puff Discount Tobacco and Lottery shop next to the Giant Eagle.

"His father's from Nigeria, right?" asked Maria, wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers T-shirt.

Kenya, actually. But the point is the same: The Norgrens, who backed Al Gore in 2000 and John Kerry in 2004, will vote for Hillary Clinton on Tuesday. And if Obama wins the nomination, these Democrats say they'll vote for Republican John McCain, even though they want an end to the war in Iraq, where their soldier-son is about to start his third tour.

...

The antipathy toward Obama isn't necessarily logical. Outside the Giant Eagle -- pronounced "jyn-igl" in the local accent -- Edward Norgren listed his reasons: Clinton's ad accusing Obama of taking oil-company money; Michelle Obama's suggestion that she hadn't been "proud" of her country; Obama's provocative former preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. And, of course, there was the "bitter" remark. "My dad taught me to hunt and I taught my son," he said.

"It's a racial component, too," Maria Norgren added. "A lot of black people are voting for him." And her older, white neighbors "won't vote for a woman or a black man."

"I saw the ads" — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama's bitter/cling comments a week ago — "and I was appalled, frankly. I thought it represented the nadir of mean-spirited, negative politics. And also of the politics of distraction, of gotcha politics. It's the worst of all worlds. We have three terrible traditions that we've developed in American campaigns. One is outright meanness and negativity. The second is taking out of context something your opponent said, maybe inartfully, and blowing it up into something your opponent doesn't possibly believe and doesn't possibly represent. And third is a kind of tradition of distraction, of getting off the big subject with sideshows that have nothing to do with what matters. And these three aspects of the old politics I've seen growing in Hillary's campaign. And I've come to the point, after seeing those ads, where I can't in good conscience not say out loud what I believe about who should be president. Those ads are nothing but Republicanism. They're lending legitimacy to a Republican message that's wrong to begin with, and they harken back to the past twenty years of demagoguery on guns and religion. It's old politics at its worst — and old Republican politics, not even old Democratic politics. It's just so deeply cynical."

In 2007, according to the National Priorities Project, the federal government spent 42.2 percent of every income tax dollar on military spending.

This figure includes 28.7 percent for current military and war spending, 10 percent for interest on military debt and 3.5 percent for veterans' benefits.

Long ago I discovered that the word "frankly" often meant a lie was coming. I learned this from an insurance agent, who preceded every attempt to sell me useless coverage with a "frankly." This is why I distrust what Hillary Clinton said about Barack Obama and his admittedly klutzy statement about guns, church, immigrants and bitterness -- "elitist, out of touch and, frankly, patronizing," she said. Frankly, I don't believe her.

And this, frankly or not, is the trouble with Clinton. Obama clearly misspoke. But there are very few moments with him where I feel that he does not believe what he is saying -- even when, as with his lame capitulation of leadership regarding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I can't respect it. With Clinton, on the other hand, those moments are frequent. She is forever saying things I either don't believe or believe that even she doesn't believe. She is the personification of artifice.

To add to his woes, Jackson was besieged by a horde of Japanese media anxious to paint him as something of a violent, street hardened criminal. Already it had been reported in Japanese newspapers that Jackson lives in a bus and communicates with homing pigeons in place of a telephone. Instructed by Pride officials to play the heel, Jackson added fuel to the media frenzy by blatantly and comically perpetuating these stereotypes during the course of an impromptu press conference.

[...]

FCF: At this point now they did at least agree to let weigh in on Saturday. What particular time?
QJ: I weigh in at 6:00 PM. They think because I live in a bus and I'm poor, that they can push me around.

FCF: There seem to be a lot of rumors swirling around about you in the Japanese media. You mentioned living in a bus.
QJ: Is this [interview] going to be in Japan or America?

FCF: America.
QJ: Then Japan won't see this?

FCF: No.
QJ: Hell no, I don't live in no motherfuckin' bus (laughs). Terry Trebilcock told that shit to try promote me as a--I don't know what he's trying to do. I guess if Japanese people like me living in a bus, goddammit call me the Busboy. Fuck it. If they're going to pay me for living in a bus, goddamn, I'm not lying, I'll take pictures in a bus next time.

McCain may be an asshole, but he's not an idiot. He's doing exactly the right thing right now by going overseas for a fact-finding tour in Europe and the Middle East —basically exiling himself from the public eye —while Obama and Hillary claw each other's eyes out every five minutes on MSNBC. He's smart enough to know that whichever candidate emerges from the Democratic scrum is going to have a face like an uncooked side of beef come general-election season; he doesn't need to say a word to raise both of their negatives. Hillary is doing half of McCain's dirty work for him by repeatedly assailing Obama's supposed lack of experience and questionable patriotism, while Obama is inadvertently helping McCain's cause by forcing Hillary to go all craven psycho-bitch on him to stay alive in the race. We saw this effect on display most overtly after the Cleveland debate, when the angry back-and-forth banter by both Obama and Hillary left McCain, for the first time, leading in the polls against either candidate.

Democrats had all the momentum going into this race because of seven years of uninterrupted press scrutiny of the Bush administration; by the time November rolls around, however, most voters are going to feel like the Democrats have been in charge for over a year. And McCain will be able to swoop in and ride a "throw the bums out" uprising straight to the White House —just in time to actually keep the same old bums in charge. In American politics, always look for the worst possible scenario to emerge triumphant. And right now, that's it.

Esquire: And you didn’t have any moral qualms?

Yoo: No[.]

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Wednesday sharply disputed Bill Clinton's reported claim that Richardson promised not to endorse Barack Obama's bid for the White House.

"I never did," Richardson told CNN. "I never saw [President Clinton] five times. I saw him when he watched the Super Bowl with me. We made it very clear to him that he shouldn't expect an endorsement after that meeting."

...

In the interview Wednesday, Richardson acknowledged he was "very close to endorsing" Clinton, but decided not to after the campaign got "nasty."

"I held back. I waited. I felt the campaign got nasty. I heard Senator Obama; he would talk to me continuously," Richardson said.

"The Clintons should get over this," he added.

"It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended," one superdelegate said.

According to those at the meeting, Clinton - who flew in from Chicago with bags under his eyes - was classic old Bill at first, charming and making small talk with the 15 or so delegates who gathered in a room behind the convention stage.

But as the group moved together for the perfunctory photo, Rachel Binah, a former Richardson delegate who now supports Hillary Clinton, told Bill how "sorry" she was to have heard former Clinton campaign manager James Carville call Richardson a "Judas" for backing Obama.

It was as if someone pulled the pin from a grenade.

"Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that," a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted.

The former president then went on a tirade that ran from the media's unfair treatment of Hillary to questions about the fairness of the votes in state caucuses that voted for Obama. It ended with him asking delegates to imagine what the reaction would be if Obama was trailing by just 1 percent and people were telling him to drop out.

"It was very, very intense," said one attendee. "Not at all like the Bill of earlier campaigns."

When he finally wound down, Bill was asked what message he wanted the delegates to take away from the meeting.

At that point, a much calmer Clinton outlined his message of party unity.

"It was kind of strange later when he took the stage and told everyone to 'chill out,' " one delegate told us.

"We couldn't help but think he was also talking to himself."