The Beijing Olympics are 22 days away.  I can't wait to catch the best athletes in the world compete against each other (exception: baseball, but the "athlete" label is only marginally applicable anyway).  I am also excited about getting to watch all manner of sports that rarely make the airwaves in these parts, the presence of a half-dozen 24-hour sports channels in the cable line-up notwithstanding.

But I am not eager for the glory that China hopes the Olympics will bring to her, and for the media coverage sure to oblige. Setting aside Tibet, about which I cannot profess to know much, China’s support for the genocidal regime in Sudanand the murderous thugs in charge of Zimbabwe is grounds for shame, not glory.

The question is what to do.

TPM is reporting that MoveOn.org will not use 527s, in response to Obama's efforts to keep 527s out of the election.  Obama wants the campaign to be about ordinary people, and not about loopholes where unaccoutnable big-time donors can tilt the playing field if they just flash enough cash.

This, my friends, is huge -- and it is a call for supporters to step up to the plate.

So now the DNC's punishment of Florida and Michigan for flouting party rules on the scheduling of their primaries is, according to Senator Clinton, somehow akin to the situation in Zimbabwe.

Wow.

I'm not sure there is anyone who shouldn't be gravely insulted by that comparison.

After sifting through the absolutely horrifying stories about the Chinese earthquake and the refusal of the Burmese junta to let aid workers aid, it was a relief to get to the domestic politics section of the New York Times this morning.

There, however, I came across an article (buried back on page A18), A Usually Legal Practice That Wears Black Eyes that struck me as a little bit funny, a little bit sad, and as a big reminder about why Obama and his campaign are valuably different.

Basically, it's a story of the Clinton campaign's reliance on "street money" or "walking around money."  The humor is that, in a move reminiscent of the plan to pay bloggers for pro-Clinton posts,  the Clinton campaign essentially has to buy its support -- and it still lost.  (Even if such measures -- and/or Obama's refusal to engage in them -- made the difference in Texas and Pennsylvania.)

It has been a spring time of indignities, most especially for our nation's press.  A new low was achieved today.

At the end of a somewhat rambling column in the NYT this morning, Gail Collins makes an analogy that sickened me to my core:

We're down to a race between the candidate who claims he will make the political process better but has yet to demonstrate exactly how that works, and the woman who claims she’s the only one who’s powerful enough to take on the Republican forces of darkness. Don Quixote vs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both accompanied by their lieutenants — the men who think it’s all about them.

Did she just suggest that Hillary is like Buffy?  In any way, shape, or form?  

That is an outrage for which I just will not stand. It demands a resounding and immediate response.

They're at it again.  The Orwellian-named "American Leadership Project," a collection of ad execs and career political hacks (with some help from some AFSCME) are running a new attack ad.

The ad is a classic 527 assault.  It doesn't even mention Clinton at any point.  Instead, it flimsily floats the claim that Obama doesn't "have a plan" to deal with the looming economic crisis.  It is purely negative, although it laughably casts itself as informative (suggesting that one call the Obama campaign, although it provides no means for doing so).

Indiana?

Nope

North Carolina?

Nope

Guam? West Viginia?  Puerto Rico?

Nope, nope, and nope

Then where?

(just make the jump)

Here's my reaction to the prevailing Pennsylvania story – which is to say a close look at how the media does the Clinton’s spinning for her.

The examples of this are legion, but I’ll parse just one that is stuck in my head.  The 8 a.m. lead-in to the news on NPR’s morning edition went something like this:  "Good Morning.  The pundits all said that Hillary Clinton needed a 10-point win in Pennsylvania last night to stay alive.  And she won ... (pause)... by ten points."

As a statement goes, it is good copy – it is seemingly informative, captures what I would say is the conventional wisdom, and pithy to boot.  

The only problem is that it is dead wrong on three accounts.

[Note: this diary is cross posted on MyDD under my handle there, "NewHavenDave"]

Up until this morning, I -- an Obama supporter -- had grumbled about Clinton's kitchen sink, mudslinging strategy, but had steadfastly vowed that if it worked and she somehow got the nomination, I would still support her in November.

No longer.

If Clinton "wins", her reckless and genocidal nuclear deterrence policy will drive my out of the Democratic Party.

This diary is a brief rant about NPR's Morning Edition has been with respect to its coverage of the Democratic nomination race.  

I first really started to notice it in February, when ME's only Monday morning story following the previous weekend's Obama sweep of Washington, Nebraska, and Louisiana was a misleading one about racial polarization in the primaries.  This was during pledge drive week, so I made my private pledge to redirect my public radio dollars to the local college station instead this year (WNHU, if you're keeping track).

And then there's been Cokie Robert's weekly segment -- cast as a "take on politics", but really strictly from a Washington Insider perspective that has failed to grasp the essence of Obama campaign from the start or throughout.

But this morning's show took the proverbial cake.  Click here to listen.  Details and my take on it after the jump.

(Before I begin I will acknowledge that the "they" in question -- the Clinton campaign -- have been making (stuff) up for a while now, as the Tall Tale from Tuzla sure illustrates).

But the latest claim, from some guy named Daniel Baer, stretches a key point of this campaign beyond its breaking point.

In the course of an opinion piece in the Christian Science Monitor yesterday, Baer, identified as a Clinton supporter, claims that the primary/caucus season is producing nothing more than a "virtual tie."

I came across an interesting study that shows the Florida mail-in re-vote plan would feature a heavy bias against African-Americans.

The crux of it is that there is a startlingly high error rate in the addressses in the registration records.  Errors that include bad or missing zip codes or missing apartment numbers are detectable, and are twice as likely to affect African-Americans as they are others.

In other words (since voting is involved), the mail-in revote plan isn't just bad, its unconstitutional!

Florida is moving forward to with its own mail-in re-vote plan.  

Although the details are sketchy, the essential points are as follows:
--Ballots would be mailed to all registered democratic voters;
--The election would end June 3.  From the report cited above, it's not clear is ballots would have to be received by then, or post-marked by then;
--There would be "50 regional voting offices to help 'disadvantaged communities'"

Is this a good plan?

"Should she apologize?" is the question.  Someone is freeping it because right now the No's are beating the Yes's 55-45.

Let's change that.
Vote here

Hillary won the Texas primary by three percentage points, and appears to be cutting into Obama's anticipated caucus margin.  While we can speculate as to how much Red Phones, Picture Darkening, Leaked Memos, Latino Support, and the rest drove these results, let us not forget who might actually have been Hillary's best friend last night:

Rush Limbaugh

Why?  It was widely reported that Limbaugh was urging his listeners (and they ain't Dems) to vote for Hillary last night, so as to line up what he believes is a more favorable race in November.  And, CNN reported that Republicans made up something like 15 percent of the Democratic turnout last night, and that 46% of them (per exit polls) went for Hillary.

The math, after the jump.

It should come as no surprise that the poorly named "American Leadership Project", a pro-Clinton 527 is taking to the airwaves in full force today.

Although Obama has some outside help as well (thanks MoveOn and SIEU), most of their support has gone towards the ground game rather than the air game.  (And appropriately so!)

So, once again, I propose two things:

1. Direct action against the "leaders" behind the ALP  (see after the jump)

2. Direct support for the Obama campaign, with a "527-themed" contribution (with a donation to the campaign featuring the digits 5, 2, and 7).

Yesterday brought us news of the American Leadership Project, a 527 organization that is already running pro-Clinton, anti-Obama ads in Ohio and elsehwere.  Many (myself included) mustered significant outrage over this unfortunate turn in the contest for the democratic nomination.

Today, we may have moved on to other things -- but that 527 is still there.  This diary is a simple reminder that the campaign against the ALP needs to be an ongoing effort.

There are two prongs to the response:  expose the operatives of the ALP, and create "527" of our own.  (Don't worry, hypocrisy police, I don't REALLY mean the latter.  Read on and you'll see what I do mean).

ABC has a report of a new 527 (with the delightfully Orwellian name of the "American Leadership Project") planning to hit the airwaves, mailboxes, and answering machines of people throughout Ohio and West Virgina (and possibly Texas and Pennsylvania)  (see here).

As a first amendment type, I think there is limited use in pulling one's hair out over the right of these guys to exist.  I do, however, think that what they are doing is damaging to the party -- particularly with Clinton's chances of winning looking increasingly remote.

So I propose the following action: If the people behind the 527 insist on sullying our party, then that they must pay the price.  

See what we can do after the jump: