Obama Expands Delegate Lead Over Clinton

"¦Fragile lead..." I guess the laws of probability and arithmetic are also fragile.

The DNC has learned that Senator Obama is playing right into the hands of the Republicans in Pennsylvania. The Republican plan to cross party lines and vote for Senator Obama and then vote for Senator McCain in the general, the way they have in other open states which Senator Obama has won. This tactic is being abetted by Senator Obama supporters by initiating a program to flip the registrations of independent and Republican voters to Democrat so they can vote for him.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/9020.html
Obama works to convert in Pennsylvania
By: Carrie Budoff Brown
March 14, 2008 06:23 AM EST

This tactic was started in the seventies. In 1972, Republican voters in Michigan decided to make a little mischief, crossing over to vote in the open Democratic primary and voting for segregationist Democrat George Wallace, seriously embarrassing the state's Democrats. In fact, a third of the voters (PDF) in the Democratic primary were Republican crossover votes. In 1988, Republican voters again crossed over, helping Jesse Jackson win the Democratic primary, helping rack up big margins for Jackson in Republican precincts. (Michigan Republicans can clearly be counted on to practice the worst of racial politics.) In 1998, Republicans helped Jack Kevorkian's lawyer -- quack Geoffrey Feiger -- win his Democratic primary, thus guaranteeing their hold on the governor's mansion that year.

This is the tactic used in Texas as evidenced by this E-mail sent to Republicans and Independents by those who wanted Senator Clinton out of the race.

http://www.thecityedition.com/Pages/Archive/Winter08/EmailAppeal.html?q=node/358

The idea is to lessen Senator Clinton's lead in Pennsylvania and decrease the number of delegates she wins by using Republican and Independent voters.

Sounds like old style politics to me. Any thing to win, even if it hurts your own Party in the general election. I didn't think Senator Obama would stoop so low.

At least Barack can still consider having a V8. No sense in missing every boat.

I'll admit the only reason I think it would be fun to see Clinton win is to see how they would go after McCain. I don't expect Obama to be as much of an asshole towards him.

some mind boggling numbers regarding republicans crossing over in tx and ohio

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/03/17/many_voting_for_clinton_to_boost_gop/

Part of the reason why it's so easy to post on this thread is because the main subject is about Obama; advertisers love that. The more that's buzzed about Obama (in any fashion), the more ad revenues pour into media outlets and internet boards. In contrast, it's harder to post to any story about Clinton since too many negative comments about her may backfire (the advertisers may see declining revenues on the Obama side as well), so they have to make sure the Hillary negative comments are at a minimum, even if the number of visible comments don't reflect the true feeling of all us folks out there posting.

BTW, Clinton won't be the Dem nominee. The party leaders will humor her for awhile by letting her dragging out this nomination process; it's good for the advertisers on all the media outlets (especially the political commentary shows and blogs). Then when the advertising people have gotten their fill of revenues and clicks to their website, the Dem party leaders will pull the plug on Clinton.

Obama has enough delegates now that Hilllary just needs to admit defeat and shut up.

I will never understand HuffPo posters who post comments that have nothing to do w/the article they comment on.

Here"s an excerpt from Dr. Jack Wheeler"s "How the Clintons Will Destroy John McCain" that might explain why Hillary is campaigning as if she were the Republican:

The number of fellow Senators who think John McCain is psychologically unstable is large. Some will admit it publicly, like Thad Cochran who says, "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine."

Others relate times when McCain screamed four-letter obscenities right in their faces in the Senate cloak room, like Dick Shelby, Rick Santorum, or Jim Inhofe. "The man is unhinged," one Senator told me. "He is frighteningly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief."

That John McCain is clinically nuts is scary enough. What worries a small group of GOP Senators and Congressmen even more is a deep and dark skeletal secret in McCain's glorified past to which they are privy, and which the Clintons will use to blackmail him.

They have been having discussions with a Russian whom we'll call "T" for Translator. T's father was the Soviet military intelligence officer who ran the "Hanoi Hilton" prison holding captured Americans during the Vietnam War. One of those prisoners was John McCain.

The GRU -- Glavnoje Razvedyvatel'noje Upravlenije or Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet (now Russian) Armed Forces - operated the entire North Vietnamese prison system holding American prisoners of war. GRU officers, all of whom were Russians, oversaw the interrogation of every American POW.

The interrogations themselves were conducted by Vietnamese who spoke some English. After each interrogation session, which could often include torturing the prisoners at the direction of the GRU officers, the Vietnamese interrogator would write a report of the session - in Vietnamese.

These reports had to be translated into Russian. T, a bright teenager living in the GRU compound in Hanoi, had become fluent in Vietnamese, and ended up translating many of the reports and interrogators' notes.

John McCain, flying his A-4 Skyhawk, was shot down over Hanoi on October 26, 1967. Badly injured from the ejection, he was beaten and abused by his captors. In July, 1968, his father, US Navy Admiral J. S. McCain, was made CINCPAC, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command, commander of all US military forces in the Vietnam theatre. Upon learning this, the Vietnamese offered - according to McCain - to release him.

McCain claims he refused, because he demanded all American POWs captured before him be released as well. He thus remained a prisoner when he could have gone home, and was subjected to constant brutal beatings and torture for years: that is the source of the "war-hero" saga making McCain a greater war-hero than any other American POW.

Yet the offer of release would had to have been approved by the GRU overseers of the North Vietnamese - and T does not recall any such offer being made. T admits, however, that this took place before McCain was transferred to Hoa Loa prison, nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the POWs. T had only direct knowledge of what happened at Hoa Loa, and not the other prisons, where T's father was in charge.

McCain was kept at the Hanoi Hilton from December 1969 until his release, along with all the remaining POWs, in March of 1973. During this time, T translated all the Vietnamese interrogators' notes and reports regarding John McCain.

According to T, they reveal that McCain had made an "accommodation" with his captors, and in exchange, T's father saw that he was provided with an apartment in Hanoi and the services of two prostitutes. Upon returning to his prison cell, he would say he had been held in solitary confinement. That may be why so many of his fellow prisoners said later they saw so little of him at Hoa Loa.

The notes and reports written in Vietnamese were sent to Moscow, where T was a now a college student, for T's translation into Russian, then placed into GRU archives. That's where they stayed until 1991. Late that year, as the Soviet Union was collapsing, the CIA and the GRU made a deal for a document swap.

All of what it involved, T doesn't know. What T's father, by now retired but still with substantial contacts within the GRU, did learn (and thus T learned) was that the swap included all of T's translations.

In other words, the CIA has in its possession the notes and reports of John McCain's interrogators at the Hanoi Hilton, in both the original Vietnamese and translated Russian, showing collaboration with his Communist captors.

Allegations of this nature have been made over the years, many by Vietnam veterans. There is an even an organization, Vietnam Veterans Against McCain. But they are based on suspicions and circumstantial claims. There has never been any hard direct evidence.

What T says the CIA has is such evidence. Its release would destroy McCain. The threat of its release could force McCain to take a fall, blow the election and lose on purpose. And just who do you suppose would know what the CIA has and work with them to release it?

Someone who has been a CIA asset since he was recruited by London station chief Cord Meyer while a student at Oxford in 1968?

(Back in the 90s years after he retired, if Cord drank a little too much Scotch, he would laugh derisively at those conspiratorialists who accused Bill Clinton of being connected with the KGB.

"They all darkly point to Bill's participation in anti-war peace conferences in Stockholm and Oslo, and his trip to Leningrad, Moscow, and Prague while he was at Oxford. "Who could have paid for this?', they ask. "It had to be the KGB!' they claim." Cord would shake his head. "What rot - we paid for it. We recruited Bill the first week he was at Oxford. Bill's been an asset of The Three Bad Words ever since." Cord passed on in 2001.)

The small group of Senators and Congressmen who have been briefed by T have been unable to confirm with the CIA any details of its document swap with the GRU beyond an admission that such a swap "may have happened." They are very nervous about pursuing the matter any further.

The Clintons are not nervous. They are utterly ruthless, and have buddies at Langley all too happy to help them.

this has most likely been asked previously, but for the late-comers to this discussion, can somebody please explain how Obama's delegate lead, which is currently mathematically impossible for him to lose through the remaining primary process, can be termed "fragile?"

Obama will do for this country what Tiger Woods has done for the game of golf. I have followed golf my entire life. Never has there been such a change in this "old traditional" sport than what has happened since Tiger Woods has come along to change what was racial, sexest about one of the finest sports we have. He did it with class. That what Obama is doing with this election. He is making a change with integrity, intelligence, and class.

Make no mistake they are both very smart about how they are going about making these changes.

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/17858430/site/21683474/

Fox News, the NeoCons, The Clintons and others scramble about to smear Sen Obama

meanwhile

Barack Obama steadily, calmly just keeps racking up the Delegates.

Let them SPIN.

I think we can all see where this is going.

its kinda funny the article we are all posting on is obama furthering his delegate lead. i think there are less than a handful of posts addressing this fact.