Ding-dong, the witch is dead... And, of course, McSame wants to poach her disgruntled supporters...

friggin' FINALLY...!

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will endorse Senator Barack Obama on Saturday, bringing a close to her 17-month campaign for the White House, aides said. Her decision came after Democrats urged her on Wednesday to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around Mr. Obama.

Howard Wolfson, one of Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategists, and other aides said she would express support for Mr. Obama and party unity at an event in Washington that day. One adviser said that Mrs. Clinton would concede defeat, congratulate Mr. Obama and proclaim him the party’s nominee, while pledging to do what was needed to assure his victory.

a few powerful folks must have had a "come to jesus" chat with her behind closed doors... they probably also insisted that she leave her broom outside... (sorry, i'm not feeling terribly "gracious"...)

cue the poacher...

Memo to disappointed women supporters of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton: Republican John McCain wants your vote.

McCain, the senator from Arizona who has wrapped up his party's White House nomination, moved on Wednesday to woo women and other Clinton backers whose disappointment over her defeat by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama could cause them to switch teams.

"I would welcome any of Senator Clinton's supporters' vote," McCain told reporters in Louisiana, adding he would seek backing from people across the political spectrum.

"I think there's a lot of Senator Clinton's supporters who will support me because of their belief that Senator Obama does not have the experience or the knowledge or the judgment to address this nation's national security challenges," McCain said.

i suppose if someone was misguided enough to support hillary, they're probably also misguided enough to support mccain... establishment look-alikes, dontcha know... i'm just hoping that, beneath all that inspiring rhetoric, obama isn't one of 'em...

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Cue the Obama smears

the floodgates are about to open, and not just from the hillary side of the road...

While some cynics still view Barack Obama’s appeal for “change” as empty rhetoric, it’s starting to dawn on Washington insiders that his ability to raise vast sums of money from nearly one million mostly small donors could shake the grip that special-interest money has long held over the U.S. government.

This spreading realization that Obama’s political movement might represent a more revolutionary change than previously understood is sparking a deepening resistance among defenders of the status quo – and prompting harsher attacks on Obama.

Right now, the front line for the Washington Establishment is Hillary Clinton’s struggling presidential campaign, which has been stunned by Obama’s political skills as well as his extraordinary ability to raise money over the Internet. Obama’s grassroots donations have negated Clinton’s prodigious fundraising advantage with big donors.

Powerful lobbies – from AIPAC to representatives of military and other industries – also are recognizing the value of keeping their dominance over campaign cash from getting diluted by Obama’s deep reservoir of small donors. It’s in their direct interest to dent Obama’s momentum and demoralize his rank-and-file supporters as soon as possible.

So, neoconservatives and other ideological movements – heavily dependent on grants from the same special interests – are now joining with the Clinton campaign to tear down Obama by depicting him as unpatriotic, un-vetted, possibly a “closet Muslim.”

whatever you thought was ugly in past campaigns is about to get considerably uglier...

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Why the traditional media marginalizes and trivializes Edwards, Huckabee, and Paul

glenn, as usual, boils it down...

[Traditional media journalists] perceive attacks on the establishment to be attacks on them. And thus, most journalists are instinctively hostile to candidates which are outside and critical of that establishment. Journalists just don't believe that the system on which they depend and which gives them their access and purpose can possibly be fundamentally broken or corrupt. They are, after all, the establishment press.

so, john edwards, mike huckabee, and ron paul are clearly anti-establishment candidates - edwards for his audacity in pointing out that corporations rule the country, huckabee for daring to suggest that the r's have abandoned the party's middle and lower-class, and paul for pointing out our nation's constitutional crisis, financial unsustainability, and delusions of empire...

there's one point, however, that glenn neglects to make... our traditional media, handily reinforced by yesterday's fcc ruling, has been consolidated so completely under the ownership of powerful and wealthy establishment elites, and the relationship among corporations, government, and media outlets has become so interlocking, that journalists, rather than insuring that america's citizens are well-informed, instead play the role of p.r. flacks and spinmeisters to their masters' agendas... and their masters REQUIRE elected officials who will CONTINUE to serve that agenda, and to see candidates emerge who clearly WON'T serve that agenda scares the crap out of them, and therefore must be stopped...

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"[The Iraq media debate] is all just complete blather*, and never means anything"

we-e-e-e-e-ell... i would dispute the term "blather*"...

glenn greenwald...

It has been extremely difficult over the past several months to pay any attention at all to the discussion of Iraq from our political and media stars. It is all just complete blather, and never means anything. All of these stern and worried and tough words spill endlessly from their mouths -- they all proclaimed in May that September was the Day of Reckoning: there would be bipartisan, forced withdrawal if the political benchmarks weren't met -- only for the same thing to happen over and over. The conditions are not met; Bush proclaims we are staying; and the Washington Establishment submits.

[...]

(1) If X does not happen, there is no justification for staying; (2) X has not happened; (3) we must stay. That is why nothing they say has any meaning. Staying in Iraq is always the only real goal. Everything else is just pretext and blather to continue to do that.

perhaps i'm being excessively picky, but i think that "talking foolishly" ISN'T what is happening here... i think glenn destroys his own case for "blathering" when he says that "staying in iraq is always the only real goal"... if the "blathering" were being done "foolishly," it wouldn't HAVE a goal... instead, i believe it is being done consciously and deliberately...

blath·er
Pronunciation: 'bla-[th]&r
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): blath·ered; blath·er·ing /-[th](&-)ri[ng]/
Etymology: Old Norse blathra; akin to Middle High German blOdern to chatter
: to talk foolishly at length -- often used with on

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