Please don't recommend this diary. Recommend the mothership one here

Still needed for nomination: 26.5!

Welcome to the continuation of today's delegate countdown.

Estimates are for a minimum of 15-17 pledged delegates out of SD and MT tonight so we're hoping for some more supers to let the voters push him over the top today.

Our most recent endorsements came from Jimmy Carter of GA (who is that guy) as of 2:51 PM EST.  Updates will follow.

Yesterday I tried hard to focus on the Obama campaign's positive and magnanimous response to Hillary Clinton's poorly chosen, craven words linking her continuing in a lost cause to her husband's run in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy's tragic assassination in 1968.  I felt like this was the best tact since others had so eloquently expressed outrage at her words.

Today, however, Mrs. Clinton has found a way to incite my anger, and i cannot remain silent.  When given the opportunity to clarify herself, an opportunity afforded to her by the national stage which she still occupies for now, Mrs. Clinton chose to blame others and then make a political statement rather than a heartfelt and full apology for her remarks.

As I write this the recommended diary list here at Kos is 80%+ filled with responses and ruminations to Senator Clinton's unfortunate and offensive choice of words in trying to equate the current Democratic campaign to that of the too soon ended run of Bobby Kennedy in 1968.  

That the remarks were ill-chosen and tone-deaf to the realities in which Barack Obama daily finds himself in America 2008 is impossible to argue. Instead of focusing on her remarks, I would like to focus on the Obama campaign's response, because to me it demonstrates one of the biggest reasons I support their work: amazing grace.

I have been waiting since about last Thursday for Hillary Clinton's campaign to trot out their tried and true, tradmarked, Pre-Primary Kitchen Sink Strategy.  Perhaps I will jinx it with this post and we will see an ad insinuating Obama visited Waziristan in August 2001, but I doubt it.  Per Ben "Objective Journalist" Smith at Politico:

In a pair of new Indiana ads, Clinton keeps the focus on gas prices and fighting for workers but drops the shots at Obama, closing on a positive economic message.

To: Interested Parties

From: The Clinton Campaign

Date: April 22, 2008

MEMO: Watch What They Do, Not What They Say

What is up with that title?  So menacing.  Oooooh!

• In light of the recent revelations regarding Mark Penn and Colombia I think an enterprising journalist might ask the question, did this paragon of free trade give the okey doke to the Canadians as well?  

CBS has an account of a particularly contentious Hillary Clinton campaign rally where she got some pretty heated questions.  It seems that she may be cracking under the pressure and the realization that she cannot win.  I'm not sure what stage of grieving we are at, maybe anger.

Apparently she doesn't take criticism seriously, which explains a lot:

Clinton went on to say that elections can be heated and a president has to be able to handle criticism. "I don’t take any of it personally," she said. "I don’t take any of it seriously. If you can’t stand the heat don’t run for president because it’s a really hot kitchen in the White House."

You cannot misspeak from prepared remarks.  This is the simple premise that i predicate my assertion that Hillary Clinton's fabrication regarding her landing in Bosnia was not a "misstatement" as she has characterized it.  It was a LIE.  Period.

Here are her PREPARED remarks from GWU on March 17, 2008:

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base. But it was a moment of great pride for me to visit our troops, not only in our main base as Tuzla, but also at two outposts where they were serving in so many capacities to deactivate and remove landmines, to hunt and seek out those who had not complied with the Dayton Accords and put down their arms, and to build relationships with the people that might lead to a peace for them and their children.

Some on Dkos have apologized for this man and said there is some validity to his latest diatribe aimed at white people.  Here is my take:

PJB: A Brief for Whitey
[Cause black people don't vote Republican anyway.]

How would he pull it off? I wondered.
[Interestingly, a whole lot better than I did this here.]

I will keep this short and sweet.  Obama made another long speech today, laying out his views on American foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here is a link to the full speech: http://my.barackobama.com/...

While this will no doubt be overshadowed by the speech made yesterday, i submit that this one is every bit as good.  Join after the jump for highlights.

Barack Obama's speech today was remarkable in its eloquence, its directness and its honesty. It was a speech that only he could give. It was a speech that laid bare his attempts to understand and reconcile his own American story.  In it he sought the trust of the American people; he hoped that they too could understand his story, and see in it a part of their own.  A More Perfect Union was, like so much of his oratory, a call to our better selves.  But this speech was unique in a way that few have commented on thus far.  Buried deep in its blunt examination of the racial tensions and misunderstandings in America was a call to arms against the true casualty of our myopic focus on race and the fortunes of one group of people vis a vis another: class.

The headline:

Racial issue bubbles up again for Democrats
Clinton, Obama have each used race, sex against the other

The story goes on for 27 paragraphs and only one of them makes any tangential reference to Obama's use of "sex" against Clinton.  The reference made is months old and is really bush league compared to Ferrarro's ad hominem insinuations that Obama is benefiting from some kind of quota system in leading the nominatng race:

Mr. Obama’s advisers suggested that Mrs. Clinton was playing the sex card last fall after a brutal debate where several male contenders criticized her.

To combat allegations of secrect and show her qualifications for office Hillary Clinton has released an official resume.  I hear the tax returns can't be far behind.

I actually have gotten my hands on an updated version of the document which highlights her support of cluster bombs and such, but i don't have time to scan it in right now.

I have posted scanned copies after the jump . . .

This just came in from the Clinton campaign.  The following is Hillary's official resume for POTUS.  Hopefully the tax returns will soon follow

I have been in a bit of a funk over the recent developments regarding NAFTA and Hillary's increasingly vitriolic campaign to elect John McCain.  Today David Brooks has decided to try and talk Obama's campaign out of going after Hillary's secrecy and duplicitousness.  I'm not buying it.  In the last several days the Clinton Campaign has overreached and overreached badly.

Expect Obama to begin hammering her today in Wyoming and for his surrogates to do the same in their ubiquitous conference calls later today.

Several days ago the Obama campaign sent out an email appeal in which they set the goal of reaching 1,000,000 donors by the March 4th primaries.

Just for fun I did some quick calculations about how many new donors they will need over the next week plus to get there.

There are approximately 187 hours until 12AM midnight the 5th CST.  Currently the campaign is 23,186 donors shy of their number.  To meet the goal they will need approximately . . .

I was just fishing the tubes for video of Obama's response press conference to the "Shame on you . . ." tirade and I found one of the most refreshing things I have seen in a while.  

It is some video from Tucker on MSNBC, and no Tucker Carlson was not the thing that was refreshing, although he jumped on the bandwagon eventually.  

Susan Rice needs to be our next Secretary of State.  What a competent and insightful analysis she offers.  How refreshing and succinct are her answers.  She even wins a hostile seeming Tucker Carlson over to her side in the end.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...

Hillary Clinton has joined John McCain in calling for Barack Obama to accept public financing in the general election.  

http://www.politico.com/...

They are attempting to frame this as an issue of character for Senator Obama.  I propose that Senator Obama turn the issue on its head.

More after the jump . . .