McCain the Victim of Bigotry

Have you noticed that Barack kicked off a conversation last week about how he's going to marginalized by talk of his race? And, as always, the media obliges by writing stories about race? But a new USA Today poll confirms what all the other polls have found:

McCain's age gives voters more pause in the new poll than Obama's race — 23% say his age would make him a less-effective president, nearly three times as many as the 8% who say that of Obama's race.

So where are all the articles lamenting how McCain will be the victim of the bigotry of ageism?

Funny Barack Video

Watch as Barack loses his ability to speak - blames it on crowd.

Lefty Hazards

One of the hazards of moving to the center at this stage of the campaign is creating tensions with the base. Barack doesn't want his liberal gut to be revealed, but the liberals who launched him aren't eager to be abandoned. Consider this letter that moveon.org sent out to it's members.

On Friday, House Democrats caved to the Bush administration and passed a bill giving a get-out-of-jail-free card to phone companies that helped Bush illegally spy on innocent Americans.

Today, that measure is being taken up in the Senate. What will Barack do?

Senator Russ Feingold says the "deal is not a compromise; it is a capitulation." Barack Obama announced his partial support for the bill, but said, "It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses."

But the folks at moveon.org want more than 'work' from Barack. They know this is something that Barack doesn't do that much of - especially if it means creating a record that he can be held accountable for.

Last year, after phone calls from MoveOn members and others, Obama went so far as to vow to "support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies." We need him to honor that promise.

What will Barack do! He hates this voting stuff! When he was in the state senate, this was easy. He would choose the position he likes so much when there's a tough issue.

He voted “present,” effectively sidestepping the issue, an option he invoked nearly 130 times as a state senator.

But moveon.org won't take 'present' for an answer!

Can you call Senator Obama today and tell him you're counting on him to keep his word? Ask him to block any compromise that includes immunity for phone companies that helped Bush break the law.

Obama's presidential campaign: (866) 675-2008

Fellow Democrats will try to save Barack from having to choose who to offend by splitting the bill into two pieces. That way, Barack can vote for it before he votes against it.

"I'm going to try real hard to have a separate vote on immunity,'' Reid said in an interview to be aired this weekend on Bloomberg Television. "Probably we can't take that out of the bill, but I'm going to try.''

Challenge for Team Barack

Here's a challenge for team Barack - How do they use race to promote their candidate, but also use it as a weapon to bludgeon those who seek to inject race into the race?

As they ponder a political map that has spelled defeat for Democrats in the last two presidential elections, Barack Obama's campaign strategists are quietly laying plans to draw African American voters to the polls in unprecedented numbers by capitalizing on the excitement over the prospect of electing the nation's first black president.

It's a challenge - Position yourself as the 'post-racial' candidate, but don't allow minorities to get in the camera shot.

The strategy requires a deft touch and carries risks, however.

In large part, Obama, an Illinois senator who is the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas, has succeeded so far by appealing across racial lines. Strategists say he cannot afford to appear to be exploiting race or running solely as a black candidate -- particularly as he courts moderate whites and blue-collar workers who did not support him in the primaries.

So, at the same time they'll be calling Republicans race baiters for showing photographs of Barack with his close aid Jeremiah Wright, they'll be telling folks to vote for Barack because he is black.

Obama's formula for energizing blacks while appealing to whites relies in part on demonstrating independence from the more militant traditions of black politics and using rhetoric that spans race. He has opposed monetary reparations for descendants of slaves, for example. And he has said that he does not think his daughters should benefit from affirmative action, because they have had a "pretty good deal," and he has expressed openness to programs that could help disadvantaged whites, Latinos and women.

No stone will go unturned, which makes the strategy all the more dangerous.

The push for new and nontraditional voters is so targeted and aggressive that an NAACP official in Ohio said her organization plans to pursue individuals who are incarcerated but who have not yet been tried or sentenced and, therefore, under state law, remain eligible to vote.

Can Barack pull off the double standard without getting caught and labeled as the race obsessed candidate? They think it's worth the try.

“I’m probably the only candidate who, having won the nomination, can actually redraw the political map,” Obama replied to a question about his strategy from a Concord, N.H., woman at a house party last August. Pacing around the old Victorian home, the wooden floor creaking, Obama went on: “I’ll give you one specific example: Mississippi is 40% African American, but it votes 25% African American. If we just got the African Americans in Mississippi to vote their percentage, Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state. And Georgia may be a Democratic state. Even South Carolina starts being in play. And I guarantee you African-American turnout, if I’m the nominee, goes up 30% around the country, minimum.”

The Race Game

When they talk about how to "confront the issue of race" in the general election, the listener assumes the Obama campaign is talking about what its reaction will be if race is used against Barack. That's not it.

Barack plans on using race proactively, as a shroud to protect the campaign from the forthcoming, and highly legitimate, questions about Barack's character. As the past week reaffirms, the one value that Barack places great weight on is getting power, and he'll take America through the race ringer to get himself into the presidency.

Obama adviser David Axelrod said the Democrat's campaign will be on high alert for code words or innuendo meant to play on voters' racial sentiments. "We're going to be aggressive about pushing back on anything that we feel is inappropriate or misleading," he said.

What sort of code words would those be? Yesterday on "This Week" with George Stephanopolous, panelist Donna Brazile offered that we'd see lots of images of Barack with Reverend Wright. That's certainly true, but how can that be legitimately argued to be racial code?

It's not enough for McCain to say he cannot control independent groups airing racially charged ads on his behalf, Axelrod said, noting that the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" was independent of President Bush's campaign.

"We've seen this movie before," he said. "And we're not going to be passive in the face of those kinds of tactics."

What Barack's handlers mean is they know their candidate and his vulnerabilities regarding the bizarre people he's associated with throughout his political career, and before. It is impossible that they won't be made a big part of the campaign because they cast a serious shadow over Barack's character. The campaign needs some way to protect him from his sordid past, and they'll go on a reverse race baiting spree to protect him.

Racially charged criticism of Obama already has surfaced in several states.

Shortly before North Carolina's May 6 primary, the state Republican Party aired a TV ad linking Democratic candidates to Obama, who was described as "too extreme" because of his ties to the retired Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

Huh? This is from the Associated Press! You're not allowed to show Barack with his closest political/personal/spiritual ally, who happens to be America's most famous race baiter, because that would be race baiting? Apparently, showing pictures of Barack himself will be considered race baiting.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an authority on political communications at the University of Pennsylvania, said overt racial references are risky. But more subtle ads might stir doubts in voters' minds that could lead, in part, to racially tinged subjects, she said.

"The appeal that suggests that Senator Obama is 'out of touch with American values' invites audiences to ask what 'American' means," Jamieson said. Are voters being asked to link Obama to Wright's anti-American remarks? she said. "To question his patriotism? To fill in their fears and stereotypes? Foreigner? Muslim? For some, that appeal may elicit race-based reactions."

Okay - there's a window into the liberal mindset. Some people's minds, when presented with common and legitimate stimuli, may "elicit race-based reactions." And, apparently, it is the job of Barack's opponents to guess what these might be and avoid them, no matter how compelling their non-racial content may be.

Esquire Magazine, in a Wright inspired exploration entitled "Cracking the Racial Code," warned about being confused.

The best recent example of this I-think-I-just-saw-a-racist case of erroneous code-spotting has to be the inexplicably listened-to Donna Brazile’s assertion that Bill Clinton had been speaking in code when he said early this year that the narrative of Barack Obama’s opposition to the war in Iraq was a “fairy tale” and then for good measure called Obama a “kid.” At this, Brazile invoked her own race to claim special privilege to be offended: “As an African-American,” she said, “I find his words and his tone to be very depressing.”

Now they've got me confused - showing a picture of Barack with his racist preacher is racial code, but Bill Clinton calling Barack a kid isn't? How are you supposed to figure this out? Have no fear - The Obama campaign will be providing the answers.

The McCain team understands the attempt to make race into a fence around Barack that forbids the entry of Barack's shady friends - Wright, Pfleger, Ayers, Dohrn, Rezko, et al - into the conversation, and will presumably have a strategy in place to counteract this reverse race-baiting.

"Every word will be twisted to make it about race," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a McCain friend and adviser. When he and others confront Obama on issues such as national security and the economy, Graham said, it will have "nothing to do with him being an African-American."

This is what the Obama campaign plans to do with all the money - build a defense against the questions coming down the pike about Barack's poor judgment in choosing his friends and associates. It won't bother them for a second to use race baiting to build that wall.

Hillary Stillary?

Does anyone remember Hillary Clinton? She used to be the meanest, toughest, most ruthless politician around. Apparently, the are plenty of women who haven't forgotten her.

To be fair, it's not just women. There are plenty of Clinton supporters of every demographic description who are still ticked. But yes, it's true that the Clinton base skewed female, and that women over 30 are the most vocal of the malcontents. Some of them are calling themselves "PUMAs" (as in "Party Unity My Ass"), an acronym that makes them sound, appropriately enough, like cougars in a very bad mood. Who are these women, and why are they such buzzkills?

PUMAs. It sound pretty emotional.

Now the Democratic Party is moving forward, as it must, but it is doing so without giving the Clinton women a real hearing -- without letting them vent their anger. It is the social equivalent of talking over them, waving off their complaints, assuming they'll come around. This is a mistake. This is only making things worse (even if, as Walter Shapiro notes, history says they will come around, no matter how many PUMA T-shirts and Web sites like this one may be sprouting now).

There are several reasons we're told that women aren't letting go of their anger, but one of the most intriguing is the idea that some other woman might get the VP nod.

But this is one of the facets of post-Clinton anger that puts Obama in a hell of a bind. Because the truth is that many of Clinton's most devoted supporters overcame their own ambivalence about her because they believed it was so important to establish a precedent, to break the glass ceiling and put a woman in a job that has never been filled by a woman before.

While the 'progressive' world and the mainstream media have Barack already selected as the winner of this race, Obama, it seems, has a great deal on his plate.

Change of Address

Being Barack is expensive - perhaps that's why he feels that he can't compete on an even playing field.

Also though cash is king in politics, Obama outspent Hillary 3:1 in Pennsylvania, and lost by 10. He outspent her 2:1 on ads in Ohio, and lost. Indeed, Obama outspent Hillary, $75 million to $46 million in the Democrat primaries and the nomination fight was essentially a tie.

With Hillary winning 9 of the last 14 contests. Yup - despite the huge media machine that is pulling for Barack and painting him as an unstoppable force, he had a tough time even getting his own party to sign on to Hope.

Is it possible that Barack's decision to forgo public money could backfire? What if folks start to figure out that the only change Barack is actually pushing is a change of address for the Obamas?

Hidden away in Obama's fundraising statistics are a large number of his donors who have already maxed out their contributions for both the General Election and Primary as the Obama campaign has not discouraged them from making both contributions. This may present Barry with a problem as less than 10% of his donor have funded more than 60% of his campaign. Historically campaign contributions tend to level out during the summer prior to the party conventions, which may be the primary reason that Obama has abandoned his pledge for public financing.

You've heard, of course, that McCain came in even on fundraising with Barack for the month of May.

Compounding Obama's problem is the fact that when combined with DNC and RNC contributions the Republicans outraised the Democrats by nearly $10 million in May. The lack of DNC funding has already forced the Democratic Nationional Convention to scale back its festivities.

A Republican Loss?

Does the GOP need to lose to Barack? Some conservatives are saying so.

Andrew Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, believes that after eight years under Bush, the Republicans need to lose November's election to reinvent their thinking and policy platform.

"For conservatives, Obama represents a sliver of hope. McCain represents none at all. The choice turns out to be an easy one," he wrote in The American Conservative magazine.

I don't buy this need to lose talk - not that there's much of it. Why can't President McCain will be able to oversee a redirection of the GOP just fine, especially with the dems in control of congress?

But thinkers such as Francis Fukuyama, Andrew Sullivan and Andrew Bacevich -- all vehemently opposed to the war in Iraq -- dislike Republican candidate John McCain and see something alluring in his Democratic rival.

Fukuyama, the conservative author of the post-Cold War treatise "The End of History and the Last Man," said on a visit to Sydney last month that the Republicans were a spent force intellectually.

He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that many on the right of US politics believe "Obama probably has the greatest promise of delivering a different kind of politics" that breaks with decades of Republican orthodoxy."

This makes absolutely no sense. If you're conservative, how do you see things as being improved by putting the Dems into total control of the government with a radical at the helm? All this because John McCain being wrong on a few issues upsets you so much?

The Illinois senator would end not just the war in Iraq but the war of ideology, Sullivan argued way back in December, before Obama's candidacy truly caught fire with his victory in the Iowa caucuses.

"It is a war about war -- and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama -- and Obama alone -- offers the possibility of a truce," he wrote in The Atlantic.

Anyone who thinks that Barack would be able to end the war faster than McCain is simply not paying attention.

Statistical Dead Heat

For the second day in a row, Gallup's tracking poll of voter preference shows Barack and McCain running near even.

At the start of the long summer in which John McCain and Barack Obama will hone their messages and strive to fill their campaign coffers before the crucial fall campaign season, the two are nearly tied in national voter preferences, 46% for Obama and 44% for McCain.

Rasmussen, meanwhile, shows a seven point lead for Barack in its tracking poll.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Barack Obama attracting 47% of the vote while John McCain earns 40%. When "leaners" are included, Obama leads 49% to 42%. These results show a slight uptick for Obama since he formally opted out of public funding for the Presidential campaign this fall.

Ominous for Barack? Most Americans don't think he feels good about America.

New data released today shows that 63% of voters think McCain views U.S. society as generally fair and decent. Forty-five percent (45%) believe Obama holds that same view.

Barack - the Seal

Barack's been getting lots of buzz this week over his pretentious, and presumptuous, campaign seal. I've been trying to figure out how to get it to appear here for days, but haven't had any luck, so you'll have to click here to see it.

Ad Watch - Barack's Video Lies

For a guy who hasn't had much of a career, Barack obviously has to engage in a bit of puffery to create the impression of having been a legislator.

Just to review his 'career' - in his three years in the U.S. Senate, he's spent two running for president. Three years into his state senate term, he ran for Congress and lost, then ran for reelection, then ran for the U.S. Senate a couple of years later. This guy hasn't had any time to legislate - he's busy trying to get out of whatever job he has.

So, his new TV commercial tries to trick people, as you would expect. First deception - make it seem like he's done something in Washington.

In order to establish his bona fides as a politician who cares about working families, Obama cites his success with three relevant bills. But he doesn't mention that two of the three pieces of legislation were actually passed by the Illinois Senate, not the U.S. Senate.

There is one law passed by Congress that the ad mentions, but this one Barack had nothing to do with!

The only national law in Obama's ad is the one that "extended health care for wounded troops," and... H.R. 4986, which became public law 110-181 in 2008, includes provisions from several Obama-sponsored bills. His ideas made it into law, but Obama was not a sponsor or cosponsor of H.R. 4986 itself.

Not only was Barack not a sponsor, but he didn't even show up for the vote!

In a new 60-second ad set to start running in 18 states on Friday, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign cites Public Law 110-181 when he talks about his efforts to extend "health care for wounded troops who'd been neglected."

While the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee authored provisions that ultimately made it into the law, he did not vote for its passage on Jan. 22, when he was busy campaigning in advance of the South Carolina primary.

With all this campaigning, perhaps Barack doesn't remember how it all went down. A call to the Obama campaign reveals:

Obama's campaign tells us that when he says, "I passed laws moving people from welfare to work," he is referring to the bill that created Illinois’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 1997. Obama was one of five original sponsors of the bill, which set limits on public assistance and required welfare recipients to outline plans for moving into the workforce.

One of five sponsors! So he may have had nothing to do with it. Even in the state senate, he has to misrepresent things grotesquely to create the impression that he got anything accomplished.

The law that "cut taxes for working families" is a 2000 bill, on which Obama and 35 others were later added as cosponsors, instituting an earned income-tax credit for the state. Both bills affected only Illinois residents.

Here's the ad again.

The conclusion from Factcheck.org:

Finally, it has always been our position that it's misleading when a member of a legislative body says that he or she "passed a law," "cut taxes" or makes any similar claim to single-handed lawmaking. It takes more than one legislator to get these things done. In addition to the sponsors and the cosponsors, sometimes dozens of them, the bill needs the support of a majority in both houses. Usually, a governor or president needs to then sign a bill into law, unless the legislature comes up with a veto-proof majority.

So for Obama to say that he "passed a law" casts him as a legislative Lone Ranger, hogging credit that properly belongs to other parties as well.

Move On With Deception

In a move designed to help Barack create an air of legitimacy to his betrayal on public campaign funding, Moveon.org shut down its 527.

MoveOn.org today terminated its Voter Fund, a dormant 527, in a symbolic move in support of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The 527 has been inactive since 2004, and the liberal outfit—which expects to spend $35 million this election cycle—will use its political action committee funded largely by small donors to support its causes.

Another example of how noble the good government folks are - they shift the tool they're going to use to slander McCain as a way to demonstrate their allegiance to Barack. The symbolism is more powerful than they'd realized.

“But in light of the new politics offered by Barack Obama, I’ve come to believe it’s time to close the 527 forever—and to challenge organizations on the right to do the same,” Eli Pariser, the head of MoveOn wrote to supporters today. “Not relying on big donors means that all of us, together, have to take responsibility.”

It doesn't bother me that liberals are slimier than the good guys. What irks me is for people not to realize it.

But while Obama told supporters that he decided to opt out because McCain and the Republican National Committee are “fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs” and 527 groups “who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations,” that is not proving to be the case.

McCain and the RNC do accept those funds, but as Politico reported today there are “no serious” 527s in operation supporting McCain’s bid, while Obama has seen outside support from several groups, including MoveOn.

Trashing the Base

It is the season when, in the old kinda politics, a candidate who knows he's going to be the party's nominee starts dumping on the people who got him the nomination and moving toward the center. It appears that things are no different in the new kinda politics.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign.

This is nothing, of course, compared to Barack's grotesque betrayal of everything he's claimed to believe in by opting out of public financing, but this hits at the heart of the moonbat wing of the party that actually fell for Barack's salespitch on change.

In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party's base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.

Not that they'll say boo. They're in love, and love is blind.

"Given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as president, I will carefully monitor the program," Obama said in a statement hours after the House approved the legislation 293-129.

A show of hands please. Who trusts the pledges made by this slippery character?

Barack Injects Race

With the Hillary/Barack conflict over, and with Republicans apparently not interested in stoking racial tensions, how will Democrats keep racial conflict in the forefront? That's easy. They'll do their own race-baiting!

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama said on Friday he expects Republicans to highlight the fact that he is black as part of an effort to make voters afraid of him.

This is more of Barack's maliciousness - trying to claim that his friendships with terrorists, sleazy convicted moneymen, and racist preachers (only one member of this list is black, by the way) should be protected from investigation because doing so will just be racist - following the same pattern of manipulation he demonstrated in opting out of the finance system.

"We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going to try to make you afraid.

"They're going to try to make you afraid of me. He's young and inexperienced and he's got a funny name. And did I mention he's black?"

How does Barack's name and skin color relate to his inexperience and his cluster of shady friends and advisors? It doesn't, but Barack seeks safety by melding them together. If you say he's unqualified, that will mean you're a racist. If you question his alliance with a convicted briber, you're a racist.

He said he was also set for Republicans to say "he's got a feisty wife," in trying to attack his wife Michelle.

"We know the strategy because they've already shown their cards. Ultimately I think the American people recognize that old stuff hasn't moved us forward. That old stuff just divides us," he said.

Why is he race baiting? Why does he think he'll need tens of millions of dollars more than John McCain to compete? Because he knows that the stuff in his closet is ugly and will be damaging, and he wants to spend millions to keep the door closed so no one gets to learn the truth. How's that for a new kinda politics.

Barack's Small Donor Deception

One of the big misrepresentations Barack his using to spin his fund raising hustle into something noble is to argue that he's created his own small donor network, so who needs the broken public system.

The public system is based on an allocation of $3 from tax payers who check a box on their tax return. This option doesn't increase the amount of taxes paid by the taxpayer, so the money is effectively coming from general funds, not from the individual checking the box.

Congress set up the checkoff in the early 1970's as an alternative way of funding Presidential elec tions. Candidates that choose to accept public funds can reduce their dependence on large contributions from individuals and groups. In the general election, the public funding system places the two major-party nominees on an equal financial footing in the campaign.

On the one hand, we have a system that diverts $3 from individual taxpayers that doesn't cost them anything, and on the other hand we have Barack's historic fundraising machine.

According to the Campaign Finance Institute, nearly early half of the $263 million the Obama campaign raised as of April came in donations of $200 or less.

That's right - half of Barack's donors have given over $200, and a third have given more than $1000! This is a whole different story from a decision to redirect $3 on your tax return. Consider the analysis from Jay Mandle in the Washington Post.

Despite the importance of small donors, both Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain are still taking lots of big donations from wealthy special interests. In fact, when the nominating system as a whole is studied over time, the evidence suggests that the role of big donors will turn out to be growing, not shrinking.

Using percentages to weigh the role of these donors is deceptive. Because Barack has collected money from nearly three times as many small donors as McCain, his over $1000 donors could be identical in number to McCain's, but appear smaller by percentage.

On the GOP side, small donors were much more important for McCain in 2007 than they were for George W. Bush in 2003.

Let's take a look at some bundled contributions. Barack's largest corporate friend is Goldman Sachs, whose employees have given $571,330. McCain's number one is Merrill Lynch, where he's collected $230,310, less than half as much. McCain could very well make the argument that he's less beholden to corporate America.

Do you think this pattern continues? Barack's top five bundled donors gave $2,093,633 as of the end of May, while McCain has raised $949,579 from his top fatcats - less than half as much as Barack. So which candidate is more beholden to corporate America?

Small-dollar donations to Obama have surged this year, and those donors became crucial in the spring as the battle to secure the Democratic nomination intensified. But for most of his campaign, big donors have been Obama's mainstay.

Through March, small donations amounted to 39 percent of the combined fundraising of Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton. But over a comparable period four years ago, such contributions made up an even greater share (42 percent) of the fundraising of the two leading Democratic contenders, Sen. John Kerry and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.

The only argument that Barack can rightly make is that he will be less influenced by his special interests because he's collected so much more money from so many more people, that it's harder for him to keep track of who he owes.

Contributions of less than $200 do not have to be itemized in reports to the Federal Election Commission, so we have no idea how many are made. We also cannot rely on the candidates' rhetoric to match the facts. During a Feb. 26 debate in Cleveland, for example, Obama said that "we have now raised 90 percent of our donations from small donors, $25, $50." His campaign's own data from January 2007 through January 2008 show that 36 percent of donated funds were from small donors.

McCain has received a third of his donations from people giving less than $200, a pretty substantial portion, even while less than Barack's half. Considering, though, that Barack is supposedly running the people's race, not a huge difference.

Money Tide Turning?

Barack Obama had his worst month raising money in May - just $21.9m, about the same as John McCain, who brought in $21.5M.

Obama's fundraising figure for May is less than the $30.7 million he raised in April. At the end of that month, he had $46.6 million in the bank, with debts of $2 million.

McCain's fundraising has been weak compared to Barack's, but McCain came from way back to grab the nomination in race filled with bigger money draws. His fundraising is just picking up steam, while Barack's stumbled in May.

McCain ended the month with $31.5 million in the bank, an increase of $10 million from the previous month.

Even though the presumptive Republican nominee had his biggest month, his fund-raising is expected to fall short of the amount brought in by his likely Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama. The Obama campaign was expected to file his latest campaign finance report later today.

Obama raised an average of $40 million a month in February, March and April.

Meanwhile, Newsweek has a new poll out that shows Barack with a 15 point lead, but this is not even hinted at in all the other polls. In the Real Clear Politics average of all polls, Barack leads by an average of 5.5 points - and that includes the Newsweek results.

Newsweek's methodology also calls the poll into question - it is a survey of registered voters, a less accurate snapshot than polling likely voters.

Rasmussen has been remarkably stable.

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows Barack Obama attracting 45% of the vote while John McCain earns 41%. When "leaners" are included, Obama holds a four-point advantage, 48% to 44%. This is the fifth straight day that Obama’s support has been at 48% (with leaners). During that time, McCain’s support has been at either 44% or 45% (see recent daily results).

Fast Eddie Obama

Nice column from David Brooks today - the most sensible of the columnists at the New York Times.

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But Brooks says there are two Obamas. One, the plodding intellectual (Dr. Barack), the other a street hustler (Fast Eddie), who can hide behind the thoughtful persona while pulling off a masterful con.

Dr. Barack said he could no more disown the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than disown his own grandmother. Then the political costs of Rev. Wright escalated and Fast Eddie Obama threw Wright under the truck.

Dr. Barack could have been a workhorse senator. But primary candidates don’t do tough votes, so Fast Eddie Obama threw the workhorse duties under the truck.

Dr. Barack could have changed the way presidential campaigning works. John McCain offered to have a series of extended town-hall meetings around the country. But favored candidates don’t go in for unscripted free-range conversations. Fast Eddie Obama threw the new-politics mantra under the truck.

Oh, this is so accurate. Barack is a split personality!

And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.

Brooks isn't altogether unhappy with the idea of Fast Eddie sharing the oval office.

And Fast Eddie Obama didn’t just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style. He did it with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding. Obama blamed the (so far marginal) Republican 527s. He claimed that private donations are really public financing. He made a cut-throat political calculation seem like Mother Teresa’s final steps to sainthood.

He thinks the job of president requires that sharks hold the job. At the same time, he's concerned about a guy who sells out the causes that he believes in most.

All I know for sure is that this guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics.

The Hypocrisy Candidate

Having turned from the reform candidate into the biggest liar ever, the question is, will the media put any emphasis on exposing Barack's cynical manipulation of the masses.

This is the reward Senator McCain gets for becoming the flag-bearer for the modern public-finance crusade. He is going to be hugely outspent, even as he is "attacked" by Mr. Obama, a candidate who entered the campaign as a "reformer" and who will no doubt end a half-billion dollars later proclaiming himself to be even more of a reformer.

But Barack's candidacy can not survive without spending more money than anyone in history - the only way to escape being held responsible for the Obamafia, the unique clan of malicious thugs he surrounded himself with the launch his political career, is to so control the nation's airwaves that there will be no room for the true story to be told.

Sen. Barack Obama's decision to go back on his word and reject federal campaign financing is being hailed by fellow Democrats as a brilliant move. It is anything but.

At this point you have to be oblivious to reality or lacking in intellectual abilities to believe a thing this guy says, and Barack is banking on making sure that no one knows what's real about him.

Sen. Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, said Friday on Washington all-news radio station WTOP that Obama is doing the "right thing" by rejecting federal financing because his campaign has generated small donations from more than 1 million small donors.

Isn't it ironic that the nation's intellectual elite are so firmly behind a man who makes the Richard Nixons and Richard Daleys of the world look like reformers?

This party-line flim-flammery is unprecedented in recent Democratic presidential campaigns. Obama's decision is emblematic of his uncanny ability to renege on promises, brush off transgressions as if they were unimportant, and prevaricate with an ease that inspires marvel.

But worse than Barack's decision is the maliciousness with which he uses the language of reform and his candidacy as a movement to cloak the truth of what's motivating the decision. He's pretending that his decision to go back on a commitment made just 7 months ago is one designed to help repair the influence of money in politics.

If we don't stand together, the broken system we have now, a system where special interests drown out the voices of the American people will continue to erode our politics and prevent the possibility of real change. That's why we must act. The stakes are higher than ever, and people are counting on us.

He mocks his supporters when he says

I have an important announcement and I wanted all of you –- the people who built this movement from the bottom-up -– to hear it first.

The only movement going on here is the kind that takes place in the rest room.

One Was Missing

You have to wonder - don't any of them have any pride or dignity? Sixteen Democratic governors met with Barack the Fraud in Chicago today, just a day after he opted out of the public financing system in order to save it. Behaving like John Kerry on steroids, Barack abandoned the new kinda politics in favor of Mayor Daley (original version) kinda politics. So why wasn't at least one of these governors possessing of enough integrity to say, "hell no, I won't go!"?

In a show of unity, Sen. Barack Obama met with 16 Democratic governors in Chicago this morning, including several who previously supported Sen. Hillary Clinton.

The official topic of the discussion was the nation's economy, but the unstated goal was to demonstrate that Democrats have rallied around Obama, now that the long and sometimes brutal nomination fight is over.

There was one governor missing, but he didn't boycott as a show of good ethics, he stayed away to protect Barack from another of his own ethics issues.

One Democratic governor not present was Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Obama's campaign said Blagojevich had been invited to the event, but the governor's staff said he needed to monitor Downstate flooding.

That wasn't the real reason, of course.

Blagojevich's approval ratings continue to sag in Illinois and he and Obama have not appeared together in public for months.

The names of both men came up during the recent federal corruption trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko.

Blagojevich isn't allowed near Barack because the Governor's ship is sinking as a result of his relationship with Barack's closest financial guy through the years, the now convicted Tony Rezko, whose financial shenanigans helped Barack buy his mansion.

The Wilmette businessman, who was found guilty of 16 of the 24 charges he faced, raised campaign cash for both Blagojevich and Obama.

This is what change looks like.

Just Another Dirty Politician

Dripping with sarcasm, the New York Times editorializes this morning that Barack just might not be the angel liberals thought he was.

BARACK OBAMA isn't abandoning his pledge to take public financing for the general election campaign because it's in his political interest. Certainly not. He isn't about to become the first candidate since Watergate to run an election fueled entirely with private money because he will be able to raise far more that way than the mere $85 million he'd get if he stuck to his promise -- and with which his Republican opponent, John McCain, will have to make do. No, Mr. Obama, or so he would have you believe, is forgoing the money because he is so committed to public financing.

They only figured it out because Barack left them no choice - his decision not to be part of the public financing system is grotesque in light of his position as an agent of change, but matters are made worse by the vile video he sent to supporters attempting to mask the decision as a sacrifice to the cause.

Pardon the sarcasm. But given Mr. Obama's earlier pledge to "aggressively pursue" an agreement with the Republican nominee to accept public financing, his effort to cloak his broken promise in the smug mantle of selfless dedication to the public good is a little hard to take. "It's not an easy decision, and especially because I support a robust system of public financing of elections," Mr. Obama said in a video message to supporters.

By the end of its editorial, the Times runs out of steam, however, giving Barack a 'boys will be boys' pass on the decision, instead bemoaning the video.

The Boston Globe is less emotional, stating matter-of-factly:

His decision deals a body blow both to the system of campaign finance and to his own reputation as a reform candidate.

The Philadelphia Inquirer writes that:

Barack Obama's decision to turn down public financing for the general election is as disappointing as it is disingenuous.

And the Journal compares him to the current president:

Senator Obama is the first candidate since the law was passed in the 1970s not to take matching funds for the general election. Even candidate George W. Bush, flush with cash in 2000 and 2004, didn't do that.

Does Barack care? Not really. He's been palnning to to stop playing a good guy once he had the nomination, even while continuing to use the image as a marketing ploy. This is just the first step that makes it clear, even though most folks won't notice, that Barack is a ruthless, opportunistic, and incredibly ambitious man who will do anything for power.

Will his supporters mind? Nah. They didn't mind Bill Clinton, did they? True, Barack is worse, but there's nothing like a winner, which he looks like to them right now.