Update: (H/T to turneresq) Huckabee issued an apology.

Huck Apologizes.

 During my speech at the N.R.A., a loud noise backstage, that sounded like a chair falling, distracted the crowd and interrupted my speech. I made an off hand remark that was in no way intended to offend or disparage Sen. Obama.

I apologize that my comments were offensive. That was never my intention."

"The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we're gonna have a lot more wars." -Pat Buchanan on John McCain

by turneresq on Fri May 16, 2008 at 05:16:29 PM PDT

Original post below the fold.

Here is what Obama said about Clinton and McCain's pandering on gas tax suspension for the summer:

Clinton-McCain gas tax holiday slammed as bad idea

"It would last for three months and it would save you on average half a tank of gas, $25 to $30. That's what Senator Clinton and Senator McCain are proposing to deal with the gas crisis," he said on Tuesday in Winston-Sal

And he's absolutely right.

That's right.

1. Excluding Michigan and Florida, Obama has a popular vote lead of 610,000 votes.

2. Including FL's beauty-contest result and an exit poll based estimate in MI (which improves it from a non-contest where Obama wasn't on the ballot to sort of a FL-type beauty contest where no one could campaign), Obama currently has a 251,000 lead in the popular vote.

On the sad occasion of the fifth anniversary of the commencement of the Iraq war, I am posting an updated version of a diary of mine from a fortnight ago.

To begin with, most of us know that Obama opposed the invasion of Iraq and gave a stellar and what proved to be a prescient speech against it. But, not many seem to know that Obama continued resisting the invasion all the way through March 2003 while his opponents in the presidential race, John McCain and Hillary Clinton, did otherwise.

That's a key distinction between the candidates to keep in mind and tell others about.

MAR 2003: Obama Said It's Not Too Late To Stop The War. "State Sen. Barack Obama (D-Chicago) told the crowd, `It's not too late' to stop the war." (Chicago Sun- Times, 3/17/03)
Link

Obama campaign responds to this hit piece in NYT: Obama in Senate: Star Power, Minor Role, by Kate Zernike and Jeff Zeleny.

The fact check rebuttal can be found here:

Fact Check on New York Times Story that Minimizes Obama's Senate Accomplishments
March 08, 2008

Hillary Clinton denigrated Obama's lifetime  when she said:

I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002," Clinton says.
Link

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

That's what Senator Bob Graham, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 wrote his Washington Post OpEd regarding the classified 90-page National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam's Iraq that was presented by Bush administration's CIA as evidential basis for a war with Iraq:

What I Knew Before the Invasion
By Bob Graham
Sunday, November 20, 2005

As the nomination race stands today, Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton by approximately 159 pledged delegates with about 993 pledged delegates (PD) remaining to be allocated in the contests yet to be held.

From that, one can calculate that in order to gain a PD lead, Clinton would need to outperform Obama by 16% (in PD tallies) the rest of the way.

On March 4th, 370 pledged delegates are at stake. That leaves 623 PDs for the contests to be held after March 4th.

If we distribute PDs from each state holding a contest on March 4th in proportion to the current poll standings from that state, Clinton would net 8 more PDs than Obama in the aggregate on that day. However, she'd then need to win 24% of the PDs remaining thereafter, to end up with a lead in the pledged delegate tally. A tall order given that Obama has run a strong campaign thus far and that his polls are trending upwards.

It's a fair expectation that super delegates would not overturn the democratic will of the voters as reflected in pledged delegate tallies. Therefore, unless Hillary Clinton can win March 4th states by a substantial net margin in the range of 15-20%, she would not have a reasonable case (in this author's opinion) for proceeding with the nomination contest beyond that day.

Please find a compilation of Obama's record and positions below. A better formatted version to be posted later.

As the Clinton camp is busy spinning the so-called "Obama snub" story, thus continuing to turn the presidential race into a soap opera, a taste of their own medicine is the following.

Apparently, Hillary didn't like the idea of having her coronation challenged:

Cool Stare Hillary

August 3, 2007,  1:10 pm
Clinton-Obama Tensions Spill Into the Senate

By The New York Times

  The relationship began to change, according to several Democrats who are friendly to both senators, when Mr. Obama began musing aloud about a presidential bid. The day he opened his exploratory committee, several Senate observers said, he extended his hand and said hello on the Senate floor. She breezed by him, offering a cool stare.

At 74% precincts reporting in the SC primary, the numbers are at: Obama (54%), Clinton (27%) and Edwards (19%).

I did some calculations using exit polls (using gender cross tabs):

which estimate gives roughly the same numbers.

I also did some computations using Pollster.com's SC polls page, and interestingly, Hillary led Obama in monthly averages all the way till December:

A quick post as I didn't see this reported on the TV shows.

If we calculate the total percentages from CNN exit polls, using male/female split numbers given, we get these results:

(Richardson 4.72%, Kucinich 1.43% not in this screenshot of the table).

Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND) has endorsed Barack Obama for President.

I am particularly pleased to hear about and report this endorsement because Sen. Conrad is one of my favorite Democrats and I respect him tremendously. Sen. Conrad is about the most progressive Democrat we currently have a from a red state. He has for years done diligent work towards progressive and responsible economic policy as well as championed the working class as the leader of the Democratic side of the Senate Budget Committee.

Furthermore, showing good sense and judgement on foreign policy, Sen. Conrad also voted against the Iraq war resolution.

dengre's outstanding diary I choose change and I choose Obama! inspired some thoughts and observations about Obama, which I wanted to share with you.

In an interesting development that could have some implications for the 2008 presidential race, Nader has filed a law suit against the Democratic party, the Kerry/Edwards 2004 campaign, some labor unions and some 527 organizations, alleging them of "conspiring" to keep him from taking votes from Kerry in 2004.

I am currently experiencing some sort of a writer's block. Therefore I request the reader not to expect sharp prose or rhetorical flourish in the following elaboration below the fold.

I don't like to bet (esp. with money), except for a rare lottery ticket or two and a rarer slot machine playing for fun.

But, I happened to check the online betting site Intrade for the 2008 election and found something very interesting. Link (click the "2008 US Election" link to the left).

I am writing to report a response from Kalee Kreider (VP Al Gore's communications director and environmental advisor) to a pair of Washington Post articles on British High Court judge Michael Burton's ruling concerning Gore's movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

Please find the response here: An Inconvenient Truth: Team Gore responds, which links to the preceding posts at the Post which Kalee was responding to.

There is a diary high up on the REC that boldly declares: ``Gore will not run - breaking news in UK (Updated)``

Let's see how "breaking" it is. If you look around, the claim goes back to this quote:

Mr Gore told NRK it was a "great honour" to be awarded the prize for his climate campaigning.

Asked how it would affect his political future, he replied: "I don't have plans to be a candidate again so I don't really see it in that context at all.
BBC link

But, it turns out that Gore said exact the same thing as the bold-faced phrase above ... 9 months ago (and several times thereafter):

CORRECTED: Gore says he has no plans to run in 2008
Asked whether he planned to run in the 2008 election, Gore said: "I don't have plans to be a candidate again. I'm involved in a different kind of campaign."

Please note that Reuters was made to correct an earlier misleading report that too rushed to claim that Gore ruled out a run.