Obama: No Backing Down!

One thing I like about Barack Obama is that when he hands himself lemons, he tries to make lemonade as you see in his response to those who criticized his characterization of the public mood in Pennsylvania. Recall that the whole meetings with the political leadership of rogue states started as a gaffe, but eventually became a synecdoche for willingness to move beyond the conventional wisdom of a broken establishment.

I have no idea whether this particular response to this particular controversy will "work" but it's still the correct approach and one that shows, I think, a more sophisticated grasp of media dynamics than we've seen from most Democrats over the past few years. Courtesy Matthew Yglesias
Barack Obama's original San Francisco statement here

Obama Closing in on Clinton in Pennsylvania

Sen. Barack Obama is catching up with Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Clinton now leads by just 6 points, 50% to 44%, among likely voters.

Last week Clinton had a 9 point lead in the poll.

Said pollster Clay Richards:

"With two weeks to go, Sen. Barack Obama is knocking on the door of a major political upset in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. Obama is not only building on his own constituencies, but is taking away voters in Sen. Hillary Clinton's strongest areas - whites including white women, voters in the key swing Philadelphia suburbs and those who say the economy is the most important issue in the campaign."

Jayhawks Defeat Tigers In OT For First National Title in 20 Years

Click to see ESPN Video

Obama On Patriotism In Montana

More, please:

I love this country not because it's perfect, but because we've always been able to move it closer to perfection. Because through revolution and slavery; war and depression; great battles for civil rights and women's rights and worker's rights, generations of Americans have shown their love of country by struggling and sacrificing and risking their lives to bring us that much closer to our founding promise. And as long as I live, I will never forget that I am only standing here because they did... That is the country I love. That is the promise of America.

Our Daily Bread

(Q) The NYT reported on the price of rice last week:

The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world’s population, has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months. That has pinched the budgets of millions of poor Asians and raised fears of civil unrest.

Paul Krugman devotes his column today to the rising price of grain worldwide:

Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.

This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once — in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable to a systemwide shock.

Courtesy Andrew Sullivan

Top 14 Reasons Mark Penn Coulda/Shoulda Been Fired by Hillary

(Q) Courtesy Mark Halperin
1. He insisted on a message of “experience” in a “change” election.

2. He brought his near absence of visible professional humanity to a candidate that needs humanizing more than most.

3. He treated his colleagues with disdain.

4. He refused to give up his lucrative private sector work, even for clients who were politically toxic within the party.

5. He billed the campaign premium rates for his firm’s services.

6. He had little or no experience in winning Democratic nomination battles.

7. He simultaneously served as pollster and chief strategist — and no campaign should have as its
chief strategist its pollster or admaker.

8. He was an off-putting and gaffe-prone television, conference call, and post-debate surrogate.

9. He was a lightning rod for media and labor criticism.

10 He fought against the good ideas of his colleagues about how to reshape Clinton’s image.

11. He fostered a sense of ill will and distrust with virtually all of Clinton’s other top advisers, stifled creativity, and blurred lines of authority.

12. He can be a temperamental, often immature presence.

13. He appeared to refuse to take any responsibility for Clinton’s losses.

14. His work and strategic advice highlighted many of Clinton’s greatest perceived weaknesses: accusations of a say-one-thing-do-another ethos; charges of being too centrist; support for the Iraq War; coziness with Washington lobbyists and special interests; ties to certain less-beloved aspects of her husband’s presidency.

The story reads:
Mark Penn, the pollster who has advised Bill and Hillary Clinton since 1996, stepped down under pressure on Sunday as the chief political strategist for Mrs. Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign after his private business arrangements again clashed with her campaign positions. Read full story at New York Times

McCain keeps up with California talk

(Q) It's no secret that the McCain camp hopes to expand the map past the old red/blue divide, but the candidate himself seems to have one state in mind that most strategists in both parties see as being in safe Dem hands: California.

When I asked McCain last month in New Hampshire a general question about competing in left-leaning states, he immediately cited California (even though we were standing in a much more attainable blue state).

And now this morning, when asked by Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" about his intent to appeal to non-traditonal GOP voters, McCain pivoted again to the Big Enchilada.

"California can no longer be written off in my view," McCain said. "And that means going to all parts of that state and reaching out to Hispanic voters, independents, others."

Now, whether McCain will be speeding up and down The 5 on the Straight Talk Express in late October is an open question.

But it's apparent that the candidate — who has a place on Coronado and has been called "the third senator from California" — wants to at least give it a shot.

Something that, in early April, offers much more upside than not for somebody trying to persuade donors in the state to part with their cash.

An Amazing Story...

Please take a few minutes (6:51) to watch this story.

Soldier survives RPG hit.

Air Drop Bloopers

Bless you, men of Op For, for uncovering this genius video showing what happens when air drops go wrong. a "stupid gold mine," they proclaim. And what gold it is.

And Finally...the Tax Returns

Long-awaited, they arrive — when else — at 4:00 p.m. Friday.

The Clintons' joint returns show them earning more than $109 million over a period of seven years.

The biggest source of income is Bill Clinton's speeches — source of $51 million. He made another $30 million from books; Hillary made about $10 million from her book.

Spokesman Jay Carson says, in a statement:

The Clintons have now made public thirty years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service. None of Hillary Clinton's presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information.

What the Clintons' tax returns show is that they paid more than $33,000,000 in federal taxes and donated more than $10,000,000 to charities over the past eight years. They paid taxes and made charitable contributions at a higher rate than taxpayers at their income level.

You can download them, and see a summary, here. They include detailed returns for 2000 through 2006, and the request for an extension for last year.

If you're poring over them, let me know what you find.

ALSO: The returns went early to Drudge — who has been extremely hard on Hillary for months — as good proof as any since the time of Machiavelli that it's better to be feared than loved.

UPDATE: The interesting part, of course, is the roughly $18 million that the summary doesn't account for -- (though it is accounted for in the returns).

Sobering Statistics...from the Other Track

(Q) The average black person in America is 447 percent more likely to be imprisoned than the average white person, and 521 percent more likely to be murdered. Blacks earn 60 cents to the dollar compared with whites who have the same education levels and marital status. The black poverty rate is nearly twice the white poverty rate. Blacks tend to die five years earlier than whites; the infant mortality rate among black babies is nearly 1 1/2 times the rate among white babies. And because of long-standing patterns of inheritance, blacks and whites begin life with substantial disparities in family wealth. To read the article...Unequal Perspectives on Racial Equality

Obama Raises More Than $40 Million in March

Sen. Barack Obama announced that he raised more than $40 million in March from more than 442,000 contributors across the country. More than 218,000 donors contributed to the campaign for the first time, and the average contribution level was $96.

Since the Clinton campaign isn't expected to come close to that figure, it's unlikely the campaign will announce anything until the mid-month filing deadline.

HRC's 20Pt. Lead in Pennsylvania...Gone

A new Quinnipiac poll in Pennsylvania finds Sen. Hillary Clinton leading Sen. Barack Obama by nine points, 50% to 41%, among likely Democratic primary voters.

Clinton held a 12 point lead two weeks ago.

Polls released yesterday from Rasmussen and SurveyUSA also found Clinton's lead narrowing in the last few weeks.

White House unveils Wall Street overhaul

(Q) The Bush administration Monday proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression.

The plan would change how the government regulates thousands of businesses from the nation’s biggest banks and investment houses down to the local insurance agent and mortgage broker.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson unveiled the 218-page plan in a speech in Treasury’s ornate Cash Room, declaring, “A strong financial system is vitally important — not for Wall Street, not for bankers, but for working Americans.”

The plan, which would require congressional approval for its biggest changes, seeks to trim a hodge-podge collection of overlapping jurisdictions that date back to the Civil War.

It would give the Federal Reserve more power to protect the stability of the entire financial system while merging day-to-day bank supervision into one agency, down from five at present.

Read More @ Plan to move more oversight to the Federal Reserve

Dems, GOP agree Obama tougher foe for McCain

Here’s something both Democrats and Republicans might agree upon:

Barack Obama could give John McCain a tougher contest in November.

That’s what the Gallup poll has found.

Gallup’s daily tracking pver the weekend portrayed Obama, senator from Illinois, with a 10-point advantage over Clinton, senator from New York, among Democrats. Today's results of the latest daily track show Obama up eight points. The Pew Research Center has found a similar margin.

But with numbers that are certain to add fuel to Obama’s pitch to those superdelegates on whom Clinton counts to turn the nomination her way, Gallup has found this as well:

In a March 24-27 survey of 1,005 people:

Democrats were asked whether Clinton or Obama has the better chance of defeating McCain in November: 59 percent said Obama does, and 30 percent said Clinton does.

Republicans were asked whether McCain has a better chance of defeating Clinton or Obama. Sixty-four percent said McCain has a better chance of beating Clinton, 22 percent said Obama.

March Madness

And then there were ones.
Four No. 1s, that is. The Jayhawks will play overall No. 1 seed North Carolina on Saturday, and UCLA and Memphis will round out the party at the Alamodome.

Obama Says He'll Throwback To Bush 41, Reagan

Barack Obama promised that his foreign policy would be a return to what he says was the realist approach practiced by George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

"My foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional realistic policy of George Bush's father, of John F. Kennedy, of in some ways Ronald Reagan," he said Friday. A voter at the town hall in Greenburg had asked Obama to respond to charges that his foreign policy was naïve.

"It is George Bush who has been naïve and it's people like John McCain and unfortunately some democrats that have facilitated him acting in these naïve ways that have caused us so much damage in our reputation in the world," Obama said.

Drawing on the example of the first Gulf War, Obama said that the first President Bush had "conducted a Gulf War with allies that ended up costing twenty billion dollars and left us stronger because they were realistic."

"Remember, people were saying why didn't you go into Baghdad and overthrow Saddam Hussein? The realists understood that that would be a nightmare. And it wasn't worth our national interests," Obama added.

He described this President Bush's world view on foreign policy as a big stick approach.

"Certainly George Bush's foreign policy has been dominated by the idea that because we are so militarily powerful we can dictate events around the world," he said. "If people don't like it doesn't matter because we are the biggest, toughest thing on the block. Now that is naïve."

Obama claimed that since 9-11, the way foreign policy was viewed had turned from one that understood the limits of military power and had placed a greater emphasis on diplomatic and economic strength to one that placed its sole emphasis on country's military might.

He described the conventional thinking in Washington on foreign policy as "bipartisan" and this "both ideological and highly political."

That foreign policy he argued operated from the assumption that United States could act "as a lone super power" and said that "Senator Clinton is as captive to it in some ways as John McCain and George Bush."

"I do think that Senator Clinton would understand that George Bush's polices have failed," Obama added. "But in many ways she has been captive to the same politics that lead her to vote for the war in Iraq. Since 9-11 the conventional wisdom has been you have to look tough on foreign policy by voting and acting like the republicans. And I disagree with it."

Sadr Calls for Cease-Fire?

Great news, potentially. According to the AP, "Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said Sunday that he was pulling his fighters off the streets nationwide and called on the government to stop raids against his followers and free them from prison."

The Iraqi government quickly welcomed al-Sadr's apparent move to resolve a widening conflict with his movement, sparked Tuesday by operations against his backers in the oil-rich southern city of Basra.

Al-Sadr's nine-point statement was issued by his headquarters in the holy city of Najaf and broadcast through loudspeakers on Shiite mosques. It said the first point was: "taking gunmen off the streets in Basra and elsewhere."

He also demanded that the Iraqi government stop "haphazard raids" and release security detainees who haven't been charged, two issues cited by his movement as reasons for fighting the government.

Followers handed out sweets in Baghdad's main Mahdi Army militia stronghold of Sadr City.

"In exchange for brokering the cease-fire, al-Sadr demanded that the government give his supporters amnesty and release any of his followers that are being held," CNN says.

Sadr's forces still appear to be in control of "wide swaths" of Basra. But "the Mahdi Army has suffered major losses," notes Bill Roggio, just back from Iraq. "The Mahdi Army has not faired well over the past five days of fighting, losing an estimated two percent of its combat power, using the best case estimate for the size of the militia."

A look at the open source press reports from the US and Iraqi military and the established newspapers indicates 145 Mahdi Army fighters were killed, 81 were wounded, 98 were captured, and 30 surrendered during the past 36 hours.

Since the fighting began on Tuesday 358 Mahdi Army fighters were killed, 531 were wounded, 343 were captured, and 30 surrendered. The US and Iraqi security forces have killed 125 Mahdi Army fighters in Baghdad alone, while Iraqi security forces have killed 140 Mahdi fighters in Basra.

Courtesy Danger Room

Cash-strapped Clinton fails to pay bills

Reports her campaign has been putting off paying $8.7 million in hundreds of bills and some companies are warning others to get payment upfront when doing business with her.

If she had paid off her tab, “the cash she would have had available at the end of last month to spend on television ads and other up-front expenses would have been less than $2 million.”

Indiana Now a "Must Win" For Clinton

"Mrs. Clinton's aides said they could see no circumstance in which she would withdraw unless she lost Pennsylvania on April 22. Two senior advisers and one close ally said they would urge her to quit the race if she lost Indiana two weeks later, on May 6." New York Times