From the front page of the DNC’s Washington Post:

After Romney’s Barrage, McCain Stands Tall

By Jonathan Weisman and Paul Kane
Wednesday, January 30, 2008; Page A01

On Friday, Mitt Romney accused John McCain of being the Democrats’ favorite Republican. On Sunday, the former Massachusetts governor mocked McCain’s endorsement in the New York Times and then observed, “If he’s been a leader, where has it led us?” On Monday, Romney accused McCain of clobbering Florida taxpayers at the gas pump. Yesterday, he called him an economic novice.

But last night, the senator from Arizona emerged from that negative onslaught a survivor. In money and message, Romney threw all he could at McCain in a bruising week in Florida, but it did not prove to be enough.

“You don’t want to say it doesn’t get you anything because a lot of campaigns are won on negativity,” said John Weaver, a longtime political adviser to McCain. “But if Romney wasn’t born on third base, if he had to campaign and fundraise like everyone else, I’m sure he wouldn’t be here anymore.”

The Republicans’ swing through Florida was a watershed. Not only was it the first big state of the presidential nomination fight, but it was also the first state that looked like the United States at large, with all its ethnic, religious and racial diversity, its economic haves and have-nots, and the sheer scale of its political universe. Romney was able to stay close, in part by far outspending McCain, but also by finding his strongest message yet as the can-do businessman standing against the ineffectual Washington insider.

“You’re getting your first taste of a real American election in Florida,” said Bill Nelson, the state’s Democratic senator. “Romney was telling folks: ‘I ran a business. I ran a state. I know how to run things and McCain doesn’t.’ Romney was hitting hard that McCain is not a real conservative. And I guess it didn’t work.” …

[I]t was Romney’s strategy that was laid bare, when he led with his chin and challenged McCain on his record on campaign finance, immigration, the environment and the economy…

In the end, though, those arguments did not appear to resonate with many Florida voters. The powerful Cuban immigrant community went for McCain over Romney by a 5 to 1 margin, according to the network exit poll. McCain beat Romney by 10 percentage points among voters older than 65.

McCain even won among voters who would seemingly be open to Romney’s economic pitch. Of the 63 percent of GOP voters who said the economy is doing poorly or not well, 41 percent sided with McCain, compared with 27 percent who voted for Romney…

Romney insiders believe that because of McCain’s opposition to President Bush’s signature $1.3 trillion tax-cut plan in 2001, they could portray the senator as not in command of the issue now soaring to the top of voters’ concerns.

Romney, however, faces a steeper hurdle in drawing those contrasts with McCain in the Super Tuesday states. In Florida, as he did in other early states, Romney blanketed the airwaves with ads financed partly by his own fortune. According to Nielsen Co., Romney ran nearly 4,500 ads in Florida by Monday, compared with 470 by McCain.

But with so many states up for grabs on Tuesday, it becomes increasingly difficult for Romney to leverage that kind of an advantage against his chief rival nationwide.

Who needs to spend money in advertising when you have the mainstream media behind you? Besides, Mr. McCain has plenty of his wife’s money to spend on ads, if he so desired.

And never mind that this was a victory in a state that despite claims to the contrary seems to have allowed “independents” to vote as Republicans. (According to CNN’s exit polls, 17% of supposedly Republican voters called themselves “independents.”)

And never mind the unusually high numbers of old people and Hispanics who quite naturally voted for one of their own, and the country be damned.

And it is also quite hard to buy Florida as the US “writ small.” It isn’t. It is a liberal state.

But according to the Washington Post none of this matters. This was simply a stunning triumph of good over evil. Of poor honest and hardworking John McCain over rich lying and wicked Mitt Romney.

(Why is it we so seldom hear about the money that Mr. McCain married? Or how McCain-Feingold has made running for President even more expensive?)

Still, the mainstream media’s campaign for Mr. McCain has been nothing compared to what we will be seeing between now and next “Super” Tuesday.

And, given how things turned out in Florida, it’s clear it stands a good chance of working again.

(By the way, just how tall can Mr. McCain stand? Isn’t he only about 5′ 9″?)

From her “war room” at Hillary Is 44:

Obama Snubs Hillary Clinton, Florida, and 15 Million Americans

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Barack Obama betrayed his true unvarnished personality and politics when he responded at a New Hampshire debate to Hillary’s warm compliments, “You’re likeable enough, Hillary“.

Last night at the State of the Union speech Obama once again revealed himself. The Chicago Tribune caught Obama in the act of being himself:

“Sen. Barack Obama refused to make himself available to greet Sen. Hillary Clinton before the speech.

When members of the Senate entered the chamber, Obama came in before Clinton. He went out of his way to greet as many House members as possible and walked halfway across the chamber to greet members of the Supreme Court, the president’s cabinet, the military joint chiefs.

That made what happened next even more striking. Obama returned to stand by his seat next to Sen. Edward Kennedy who endorsed Obama today in a widely watched event that reverberated across the political world.

As Clinton approached, Kennedy made sure to make eye contact and indicated he wanted to shake her hand. Clinton leaned towards Kennedy over a row of seats and Kennedy leaned in towards her. They shook hands.

Obama stood icily staring at Clinton during this, then turned his back and stepped a few feet away. Kennedy may’ve wanted to make peace with Clinton but Obama clearly wanted no part of that.

As president, Obama has said he would meet with the U.S.’s enemies without precondition. But making nice with Clinton apparently is another mattter after the increasingly angry fight the two have waged, with charges and countercharges, for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The sense in the press gallery was that Obama didn’t cover himself in glory. Someone even used the word “childish.” (Not this writer.) Judging by how much conversation there was about this brush off in the press gallery, Americans will be hearing a lot more about this tomorrow and in coming days.”

Don’t bet on Big Media highlighting Obama’s boorish behavior.

Senator Hillary Clinton is not the only one Obama is snubbing these days. Obama has snubbed 15 million Americans by leaving them out of his health care plan. Obama is also snubbing the millions of Democrats who vote in the state of Florida.

Barack Obama doesn’t care what Florida Democrats say on Jan. 29.

In a memo released Tuesday, he reiterated his long-standing view that their primary votes will be worthless.

Obama has not been on the national scene for long. Obama needs to learn that Florida has millions of voters. Obama needs to learn that in 2000 a Democrat did not become president because Florida votes were not fully counted. Snubbing Florida is not a winning strategy for Democrats. We suspect that today, Florida voters will snub Obama.

You see, obeying the rules of the Democrat party and honoring his own pledge is “snubbing” the voters of Florida.

But what is truth to Hillary’s thugs?

From those defenders of the faith at the UK’s Times:

From left to right: Parviz Khan, Basiru Gassama, Hamid Elasmar and Mohammed Irfan, all of whom pleaded guilty.

Gang plotted to behead Muslim soldier ‘like a pig’

David Byers and agencies

Four Islamic extremists pleaded guilty today in a plot to kidnap a Muslim member of the Armed Forces from Birmingham City Centre and behead him “like a pig”.

The group, headed by Parviz Khan, 38, an unemployed charity worker, from Alum Rock, Birmingham, was arrested in February last year during a series of counter-terrorism raids by police.

At the start of the trial of Amjad Mahmood and Zahoor Iqbal – who deny involvement in the plot – the jury at Leicester Crown Court was told that Khan was “a man who has the most violent and extreme Islamist views”, and headed a Birmingham-based network gathering money and equipment to send to Pakistan for the use of “terrorists”.

“He was enraged by the idea that there are Muslim soldiers in the British Army,” Nigel Rumfitt, prosecuting, said.

The court heard that Khan decided to act on his hatred by kidnapping such a soldier with the help of drug dealers operating in Birmingham. The victim was to be seized in a part of the city known for its nightlife and bundled into a car.

“He would be taken to a lockup garage and there he would be murdered by having his head cut off like a pig. This atrocity would be filmed . . . and the film released to cause panic and fear within the British Armed Forces and the wider public,” Mr Rumfitt said.

The jury was also told that Khan made visits to a shipping and freight company in Birmingham in 2005 and 2006 in order to send packages to a village in Pakistan, near the Afghanistan border, which was a hotbed of radicalism. He described the shipments, weighing up to a tonne, as aid for earthquake victims, such as medicines and clothes or “personal effects”.

The court was told that the cargoes included equipment ordered by his terrorist contacts in Pakistan, such as electronic equipment, sleeping bags, two-way radios and waterproof map-holders.

When he was stopped by a port official in July 2006 on his return to the UK he was found with a notepad. “He was bringing a shopping list from terrorist contacts of materials they wanted sent back in the next delivery,” Mr Rumfitt said. Among items written in the notebook was a laser range-finder.

In December 2006, Khan visited Manchester airport with relatives under the guise of a family outing to Pakistan, the court heard. He was under surveillance and, as he checked in, investigators went through his luggage. Inside the suitcases and bags were walkie-talkies, map holders and a bug detector.

A search of Khan’s home in Alum Rock found similar items stacked up and ready to be packed, the court was told.

In addition to Khan, Basiru Gassama, 30, has admitted knowing about the plot but not telling anyone about it. Mohammed Irfan, 31, and Hamid Elasmar, 44, admitted helping Khan to supply the equipment.

The jury was told that a bug placed in Khan’s home by the security services recorded “highly incriminating and damaging comments” made during conversations inside the property…

Another entry in the annals of the “religion of peace.”

Still, what is truly appalling is that stories such as this are no longer capable of shocking.

From the terrorists’ friends at BBC News:

Iraqi men check bodies laid out on the ground outside a morgue in the restive city of Baquba.

Gruesome find in Iraqi province

Nine bodies and 10 severed heads have been discovered near Miqdadiya, north-east of Baghdad, Iraqi police say.

The 19 victims were all male and some had died in recent days, said a Diyala province police spokesman.

The nine intact bodies were handcuffed and had been shot dead, local medical sources said.

Diyala province is where US and Iraqi forces have been carrying out major operations against Sunni militants.

Such gruesome discoveries were almost commonplace about 18 months ago when central Iraq was caught in a frenzy of sectarian killing between Shia Muslims and their Sunni Arab counterparts….

More handiwork from those heroic “freedom fighters.”

From those poll watchers at Reuters:

Protesters throw stones at riot police as rival ethnic gangs began fighting in Kibera slums after gunmen killed a Kenyan opposition politician at his home in the early hours in Nairobi January 29, 2008.

Helicopters swoop on Kenyan mob

By David Lewis

NAIVASHA, Kenya (Reuters) – Kenyan military helicopters swooped to break up machete-wielding mobs on Tuesday as the killing of an opposition legislator stoked bloody protests across the east African country.

About a dozen people were killed on Tuesday, bringing the toll to more than 850 since President Mwai Kibaki’s disputed December 27 election triggered violence that has now taken on an ethnic momentum of its own…

Kibaki appealed for peace and promised a swift investigation into the “heinous” murder of Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) legislator Melitus Were, who was shot dead while driving up to the gate of his home.

Noting that two bullets went into Were’s eyes, opposition leader Odinga called it “a planned political assassination.” He also warned that Kenya was “drifting into a state of anarchy.” …

Reuters reporters in the lakeside city of Naivasha said two helicopters dive-bombed several times, firing what police said were rubber bullets at a mob of about 600 Kikuyus — Kibaki’s ethnic group — brandishing machetes and clubs at Luos, Odinga’s tribe.

The incident came as police trucks prepared to evacuate about 300 Luo refugees to safety from the baying crowd.

The helicopters drove back that crowd, and also swooped on other parts of Naivasha where mobs were creating mayhem. Police opened fire after one flyover, shooting dead one man.

At Were’s house in a middle-class suburb near Nairobi’s Kibera slum, riot police fired teargas to disperse mourners and supporters, some of whom had taunted officers. Ethnic fighting broke out in Kibera within hours.

A Reuters witness saw seven corpses, some with cuts on the head and neck. One man lay in agony after being forcibly circumcised, before dying.

Unrest also convulsed the Rift Valley, with mobs ransacking homes, burning belongings and threatening people trying to flee Naivasha town, an hour’s drive north of the capital.

A Reuters witness saw a man hacked to death with machetes.

Plumes of smoke rose from different parts, as Kikuyus hunted down Luos, Luhyas and Kalenjins, residents said, vowing revenge for previous killings of members of their community…

About 100 people have died in the last few days in Naivasha and Nakuru, better known for their lakes and wildlife, but now deserted by tourists.

Hotels around Kenya are lying empty. The shilling currency neared a three-year low, and trading on the Nairobi bourse was halted briefly after the index dipped 5 percent.

Protests also rocked the western opposition stronghold town of Kisumu, residents said. Two people were killed by mobs.

About 250,000 people have been displaced by the violence…

Apparently, even Kofi Annan has failed to get things under control.

One man lay in agony after being forcibly circumcised, before dying.

What a world.

From those defenders of the faith (global warming) at the Associated Press:

Stranded passengers wait in a snow-covered yard to get into the railway station in Wuhan in central China’s Hubei province Monday Jan. 28, 2008.

Winter storm chaos grips China

By WILLIAM FOREMAN, Associated Press Writer

GUANGZHOU, China – Deadly winter storms — the worst in five decades — showed no signs of letting up Tuesday in China, where cities were blacked out, transport systems were paralyzed and a bus crash on an icy road killed at least 25 people during the nation’s busiest travel season.

The extreme weather — blamed for 54 deaths in the past two weeks — was walloping China as the country began one of the world’s biggest annual mass movements of humanity: the Chinese New Year festival. Before the storms, railway officials estimated that a record 178.6 million people — more than the population of Russia — would travel by train for the holiday, which begins Feb. 7.

But hundreds of thousands of those travelers spent another day shivering outside railroad stations as they learned that their trains were canceled. Most were migrant workers trying to leave booming southern Guangdong province — often called the world’s factory floor because it makes everything from Honda sedans to Apple iPods and Nike sneakers.

Those traveling by bus or car took big risks on the frozen roads in southern provinces, which have been suffering their heaviest snowfalls since the 1950s. Expressways were shut down in the nation’s financial capital, Shanghai, because snow and sleet made them a slushy treacherous mess.

The worst accident since the blizzards began happened Tuesday when a 35-seat bus slid off an icy mountain road and plunged 40 yards into a valley. The crash in Guizhou province killed 25 people, the State Administration of Work Safety said.

Another bus in northwestern Gansu province flipped over on icy roads and killed four people, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Several cities suffered blackouts as heavy snowfalls snapped power lines and hampered the delivery of coal, used to generate most of China’s electricity.

In industrial Guangdong, huge red banners were hanging around the train station in the provincial capital of Guangzhou, urging migrant workers to scuttle their plans to return home, cash in their tickets and return to their factory dormitories. About 200,000 people took the advice and got ticket refunds, railway officials said, while about 200,000 continued to linger at the station in a bone-chilling drizzle.

Thousands stood under umbrellas that formed a huge canopy in the train station’s plaza, while a larger crowd huddled beneath a highway overpass in front of the station hoping to catch a train. But the busy Beijing-Guangzhou line may not return to normal for three to five days, Xinhua said…

The general mood seemed calm and stoic — in line with the traditional Chinese trait of “chi ku” or “eating bitterness,” enduring hardship without complaint. But legions of police and soldiers were ready for any disorder, and the nation’s leaders scrambled to show the public that they were on the case…

But the nation’s top leader, President Hu Jintao, warned of more bad weather and urged officials “be aware of the seriousness of the situation and be fully prepared to prevent and fight disasters.”

So far, the central government has given a total 126 million yuan ($17 million) in aid to six provinces and one region battered by the winter weather, Xinhua said…

Funny how the article neglects to mention global warming as the obvious cause of this “extreme weather.” I guess it just goes without saying.

Obviously the Chinese need to stop heating their houses and other doing other such naughty things.

They have only themselves to blame.

From Fox News and the Associated Press:

On Deadline: Kennedy dumps on Clintons

By RON FOURNIER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Ted Kennedy did more than welcome Barack Obama into the warm embrace of his legendary family. He also consigned the Clintons and their brass-knuckle brand of politics to the past.

“With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion,” the Massachusetts senator said Monday in endorsing Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. “With Barack Obama, we will close the book on the old politics of race against race, gender against gender, ethnic group against ethnic group, and straight against gay.”

In an eloquent speech laced with stinging subtleties, Kennedy called Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a friend who “has been in the forefront of issues.” But he might as well have called her a “has-been” — a legacy of 1990s-style politics that rewards distortion, cynicism, self-aggrandizement and even failure.

Because that must be what Kennedy believes; there is no other way to interpret the clues tucked between the lines of his address.

Kennedy is ticked at Sen. Clinton and her husband, Bill, for trying to marginalize Obama after his triumph in Iowa’s caucuses, according to officials close to the senator. Like many other Democratic leaders, Kennedy worries that playing the race card will divide blacks, whites and Hispanics — and cause irreparable harm to the Democratic coalition.

Kennedy’s endorsement helps Obama on a number of fronts: It lends him a measure of the family’s political aura; it provides cover to Democratic operatives who were afraid of bucking the Clintons; and it signals to Hispanic voters, who historically are reluctant to support black candidates, that Obama is a rightful heir to the support and adulation earned by the late Robert Kennedy during his 1968 presidential campaign.

But the endorsement also says something about how the Clintons are viewed by many institutional Democrats — some of whom never cottoned to the couple from Arkansas, and only grudgingly accepted their dominance of the party since 1993.

Look at how Kennedy compared Obama to his brother, John F. Kennedy — and, by inference, Bill Clinton to a curmudgeonly Harry Truman.

“There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a New Frontier,” Kennedy said. “He faced public criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party. Harry Truman said we needed ‘someone with greater experience’ — and added: ‘May I urge you to be patient.” And John Kennedy replied: ‘The world is changing. The old ways will not do … It is time for a new generation of leadership.’”

Kennedy didn’t have to remind the crowd that Bill Clinton said that Obama was asking voters to “roll the dice” and back him.

Or that Obama has replied that he has the right experience to respond to “the fierce urgency of now.”

Line after line of the speech contained a coded criticism of the Clintons, or a defense of Obama.

He said Obama’s campaign is “not just about himself,” a dig at Bill Clinton, who talks as much about himself as his wife on the campaign trail.

He said Obama will “break the old gridlock and finally” provide universal health care, a jab at Sen. Clinton, who failed to reform health care when given the opportunity during her husband’s first term.

He said Obama had the courage to oppose the war in Iraq from the start. “And let no one deny that truth,” he added, knowing full well that the Clintons have questioned Obama’s courage…

Kennedy pointedly said Obama would not be “trapped in the patterns of the past” and could fight for Democratic causes “without demonizing those who hold a different view.” Could he be talking about Sen. Clinton, who falsely accuses Obama of not wanting to give all Americans health insurance?

Or perhaps he was referring to Bill Clinton, who acknowledged Obama’s landslide victory in South Carolina by noting that another black man, Jesse Jackson, had won the state in the past — so, big deal.

Or he might have had in mind the fact that that Clinton surrogates raised the issue of Obama’s drug use as a youth and tried to label him a Muslim (Obama is Christian).

Maybe he had both Clintons in mind. The Democratic Party’s most powerful couple twisted Obama’s admiration of Ronald Reagan’s political success — sentiments they themselves have expressed — into an endorsement of GOP ideas.

Kennedy certainly had the Clintons in mind when he said Obama would be “ready to be president one Day One.”

Sen. Clinton likes to say that about herself.

Bill Clinton likes to say that about his wife.

They’re a powerful, talented couple and odds are at least 50-50 that Sen. Clinton will win the nomination and extend the Clintons’ grip on the Democratic Party. That is, unless the young lion Obama and old lion Kennedy have their way.

“I feel change in the air,” Kennedy said.

He has now cast his lot with the promise of a new brand of politics, not knowing whether it will lead to victory — much less any real change.

Not only that, but Mr. Kennedy actually pronounced Obama’s name correctly.

“With Barack Obama, we will turn the page on the old politics of misrepresentation and distortion,” the Massachusetts senator said Monday…

Now that should supply you with your irony requirements for the rest of the year.

For lest we forget, this is the selfsame Solon who once famously pronounced:

“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back alley abortions, blacks would sit in segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of million of citizens.” — Senator Edward Kennedy, July 1, 1987

Still, come to think of it, the Clintons could still teach Mr. Kennedy a thing or two about the politics of personal destruction.

He said Obama had the courage to oppose the war in Iraq from the start. “And let no one deny that truth,” he added, knowing full well that the Clintons have questioned Obama’s courage…

[Kennedy] has now cast his lot with the promise of a new brand of politics, not knowing whether it will lead to victory — much less any real change.

Just as the longtime Clinton stooge Mr. Fournier can teach us all about media bias.

Non-partisan reporter Ron Fournier receives another blandishment from his idol, Bill Clinton.

(And yes I realize that this article appears to be some kind of “column.” But it is not presented as an opinion piece, if that is indeed what it is supposed to be.)

From the Chicago Sun Times:

Chicago real estate developer and fast-food magnate Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko leaves federal court in Chicago in this Oct. 19, 2006 photo.

Tony Rezko arrested

January 28, 2008

Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a key fundraiser for Gov. Blagojevich and other Illinois politicians, was arrested early today by federal agents after prosecutors alleged he had violated terms of the bond in his fraud case.

“Tony Rezko was arrested without incident at his home in Wilmette,” FBI spokesman Tom Simon said. “It was pursuant to a warrant issued following a government motion to revoke his bond.”

Rezko appeared briefly this morning before U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve, who is to preside over his fraud trial next month. Another hearing will be held at 12:30 p.m. today; Rezko remains in federal custody.

Rezko has pleaded not guilty to charges that he joined with another major political fundraiser, businessman-attorney Stuart Levine, to shake down money management companies wanting to invest state pension funds.

Rezko is charged in a separate case with defrauding the General Electric Capital Corp. out of $10 million.

He was released on bond last year after $1.5 million in properties were posted.

Rezko has recently become an issue in the presidental campaign, with Sen. Barack Obama under fire over his long relationship with Rezko.

What timing.

You really have to hand it to the Clinton machine. (Or they will take it anyway.)

And, yes, kudos to Patrick Fitzgerald, too. What an exemplary foot soldier he has proven to be.

From the Hillary campaign’s “war room,” Hillary Is 44:

A Face In The Crowd

We’ve been wondering for a while now why Obama has said so little about his “community organizer” days. Where are the testimonials from people Obama supposedly helped? We know practically nothing about Obama, other than what he has written himself – and that is in many respects crafted, bogus, fiction.

We have specifically wondered about Obama’s Chicago constituents – Obama obviously could not get testimonials from his constituents in Chicago – Not the ones who froze in winter.

We’ve suggested repeatedly that Big Media interview Obama constituents, especially the tenants Obama represented as a state senator – the ones who lived in the Rezko owned buildings Obama knew so much about.

Finally a Big Media outlet, from across the sea, has taken up our suggestion. It’s not a pretty story:

Barack Obama and Joann Larkins live less than a mile apart in Chicago’s predominantly black South Side, but they inhabit very different worlds.

What connects her squalid flat and his colonnaded mansion is Antoin “Tony” Rezko, the former Obama donor and friend, who goes on trial for corruption next month – and was denounced as a “slum landlord” by Hillary Clinton in a dramatic and bitter exchange during last week’s Democratic presidential debate.

Mr Obama’s past ties to the Syrian-born property developer, a well-known figure in Chicago politics for his financial largesse, have prompted new questions about the sound political judgement and clean ethics that he touts in his run for the White House.

The charges against Mr Rezko include one that he donated $10,000 (£5,050) to an unnamed political candidate from kickbacks allegedly taken from state contracts. The recipient is reported by Chicago media to have been an unknowing Mr Obama.

“Community Organizer” Obama is nice and warm in his mansion. Mrs. Larkins recalls the Chicago cold:

Separately, in 2005, Mr Obama, 46, struck a property deal with Mr Rezko’s wife, Rita, despite the fact that her husband was already under criminal investigation. Mrs Rezko bought an empty plot next to the Obamas’ $1.65 million home in the affluent enclave of Hyde Park, and later sold the Obamas some of the land so that they could enlarge their plot – a deal that the Illinois senator has since admitted was “bone-headed”.

Mrs Larkins, 51, lives just seven city blocks away, in a district where posters advertise “dirt cheap properties” and “foreclosure advice”. She moved there almost a decade ago, taking a subsidised apartment with her 20-year-old daughter and one-year-old grandson in a building that had fallen into neglect when run by Mr Rezko.

The family boiled water on the stove and draped plastic sheeting across the windows in an effort to keep warm during the city’s bitter winters, as the heating was not working. Rubbish piled up uncollected and repeated requests for basic repairs were ignored.

“It was a terrible place to live: there were a lot of drug dealers and people fighting and getting shot,” Mrs Larkins, a widow who receives invalidity benefit, told The Sunday Telegraph.

“The owners never took any interest in the place; they just wanted the rent money. We had to call the city just to get the garbage collected.”

Obama’s long time friend and patron tormented Obama’s constituents. No one cared.

The 44-apartment complex was one of 30 low-income housing projects run by Mr Rezko and his partners with funds from the city during the 1990s. By early this decade, many were boarded up as bills and mortgage payments went unpaid, but Mr Rezko moved into the fast-food business, while tenants like the Larkins struggled with the legacy of his management.

Mr Rezko was also one of the first to spot the skills of Mr Obama, offering the then Harvard law graduate a job in 1991 and becoming an early financial supporter of the new state legislator, whose inner-city constituency incl­uded 11 of his housing projects.

Although Mr Obama makes much of his roots as a community activist in Chicago’s poorest districts, he has said he had “no inkling” that there were problems with Mr Rezko’s operations. But the signs should have been easy to spot, according to John Bartlett, of the Chicago-based Metropolitan Tenants’ Association.

“The problems with Rezko were far from hidden. They were so bad that the city has had to take him to court. Anyone who wanted to look into Rezko’s activities could have learned about them,” he said.

The failure of state senator Obama, to care, to protect his constituents, is masked once again with flowery words – Mrs. Larkins be damned:

Mr Obama has recently said that he “wasn’t particularly knowledgeable” about Mr Rezko’s activities. Asked if he should have investigated his donor’s businesses, Bill Burton, Mr Obama’s spokesman, said: “The senator has a long record of successfully fighting to reform ethics and diminish the role of money in politics.”

Maybe Mrs. Larkins will provide the names of other tenants so they can tell their neglected stories to Obama, via Big Media.

Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times meanwhile, critiqued Obama’s appearance on ABC Sunday morning. Excerpts with Lynn Sweet analysis in parentheses:

Obama was told by the host, “One more time, Senator, you need to divulge all there is to know about that (Rezko) relationship. Take that opportunity here.”

Obama replied, “ Well, George, this is a story that has been out there for a year, and has been thoroughly gnawed on by the press, both in Chicago and nationally. “

(actually, it is not one story but an ongoing series of stories by the Sun-Times and Tribune, exploring the depths of the ties between the two men.)

“Tony Rezko was a friend of mine, a supporter, who I’ve known for 20 years. He was a contributor not just myself but Democrats, as well as some Republicans, throughout Illinois. Everybody perceived him as a businessman and developer.”

(earlier in the week in network interviews, Obama made it seem like he hardly knew Rezko.)

“ He got into trouble that was completely unrelated to me. And nobody has suggested that I have been involved in any of those problems. I did make a mistake by purchasing a small strip of property from him, at a time where, at that point, he was under thecloud of a potential investigation.

(Obama obscures the larger point that the strip was adjacent to his house and bought at the same time in a deal that seemed connected and gave Obama a financial advantage.)

“And I’ve acknowledged that that was a mistake. But again, nobody has suggested any wrongdoing. And you know, I think, at this point, it’s important for people to recognize that I have actually provided all the information that’s out there about it.

(Actually, last week I asked an Obama spokesman information about Rezko’s fund-raising activities for Obama and could not get a straight answer.)

Maybe Lynn Sweet and other reporters willl get some straight answers from Obama endorsers. Maybe, but for Obama the Chicago poor are out of political fashion.

Meanwhile, where are all the people that Mrs. Clinton has helped in her 35 year career?

How about those poor people who got taken in by her Whitewater swindle?

But shameless hypocrisy was always Hillary’s pants long suit.

We know practically nothing about Obama, other than what he has written himself – and that is in many respects crafted, bogus, fiction.

If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle half-black, I don’t know what is.

Remember, this is the same woman who claimed to have been named after Sir Edmund Hillary. Who tried to join the Marines. Who tried to become an astronaut.

And who has told us a thousand other lies about her life, while sequestering away her White House record at her Saudi funded “library.”

And speaking of projection:

Even the title of this screed is a burn.

Lest we forget, “A Face In The Crowd” was a devastating movie written about how a glib and cynical nobody guitar player (Andy Griffith) was built up by the media into a major and dangerous political figure.

It’s not reference one would expect from some young blogger. But definitely something one would expect from the grizzled veterans who make up Hillary’s “War Room.”

From her unabashed admirers at Reuters:

Democratic presidential candidate US Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) arrives in Sarasota, Florida for a fund-raising event January 27,2008.

Primary votes will count, Florida Democrats say

By Jane Sutton

MIAMI (Reuters) – Republican presidential candidates have swarmed through Florida looking for votes but a family squabble has kept Democratic rivals out of the state or reduced them to sneaking inside its borders…

“I believe that it absolutely will happen,” Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Thurman said. “Our voices do count and we’re going to be heard and we’re going to vote.”

In the labyrinthine process to choose party nominees for the November election, the national parties set the rules and decide who goes first in the state-by-state race. Florida jumped the queue by moving up its primary election to January 29, hoping to have more of a say in the selection of candidates…

The Democratic National Committee dealt a harsher penance, stripping the state of all 210 delegates to that party’s nominating convention in August. They also extracted a pledge from the candidates not to campaign in Florida, although the candidates are on the ballot for this Tuesday’s voting…

Sen. Hillary Clinton, in an about-face last week, said she wants the Democratic delegates reinstated and counted in Florida and in Michigan, another earlier voting state where they were barred by the national party.

In those states, Clinton could stake a claim to nearly all the delegates to the nominating convention in question — more than 350…

“The common goal that we all have is electing a Democratic president and that will require us to go in united,” said Thurman, the state Democratic chairwoman.

In the meantime, Democratic candidates have stealthily visited the state for private fund-raisers, which the rules allow, and prominent Florida Democrats are pleading with the party to release them from the no-campaign pledge.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink said the ban serves no purpose “except to give the Republican Party a head start for the general election.” …

Note that the quotes within the article do not quite support its headline.

But of course these votes will count and the delegates will be seated — if Hillary wins.

We are talking about the Clinton machine. It makes Tammany Hall look like a Girl Scout troop.

By the way, if a Republican candidate were breaking his party’s rules like this, would the media call it a “family squabble” and pretend that there’s nothing to it?

From those defenders of the faith at the AFP:

Troops of the Pakistan army patrol in the troubled area of Matta near Mingora in northwest Pakistan on Monday, Jan, 28, 2008.

Pakistani militants take 250 children hostage at school

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – A group of Islamist militants took around 250 children hostage at a school in troubled northwest Pakistan on Monday after a gunbattle with police, the interior minister said.

“About seven terrorists have taken the school children hostage. There about 200 to 250 children,” Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told AFP.

“The terrorists are demanding safe passage, the provincial government is in negotiations with them. We hope that the matter will be resolved peacefully,” he added.

Local police said the militants had holed up at the school in Domail, a village near the northwestern town of Karak, after they abducted a health worker.

Police gave chase and in the ensuing shoot-out one militant was killed and a policeman was injured, while the medic escaped, police official Shakirullah, who goes by one name, told AFP.

“They have taken the school children hostage, we don’t know how many but we think it is in dozens,” Shakirullah said.

“Officials are on the spot and conducting negotiations.”

Remember, these are the bravos that Cindy Sheehan and the rest of the America-hating left call “freedom fighters.”

There are few things that interest me less than the sex lives of politicians. And especially the sex life of Hillary Clinton.

Moreover, I suspect that the rumors about Mrs. Clinton and Huma Abedin has been ginned up by the Clinton machine to try to make her seem to have at least some human interest.

But this story from the (Clinton supporter Rupert Murdoch’s) New York Post takes the biscuit:

NOT SO SECRET

January 27, 2008 — HUMA Abedin, the traveling aide who is rarely out of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s sight, has been seen with bachelor Rep. Anthony Weiner on the campaign trail. Shortly before Clinton arrived for a fund-raiser Thursday night at the Hiro club in the Meatpacking District, Abedin was spotted going into the Maritime Hotel around the corner with Weiner. If they were trying to keep their affair a secret, you’d think they’d find someplace where political reporters wouldn’t be walking by.

If the Clinton campaign can’t find a better beard than Mr. Weiner, then they just aren’t trying.

Here, for instance, is Mr. Weiner speaking from the well of the House, via YouTube:

Rep. Anthony Weiner on ENDA

The House debates the rule for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), H.R. 3685, to be followed by debate on the bill itself. In 30 states, it is currently legal to fire someone simply because of his or her sexual orientation. This bill will prohibit employers, employment agencies and labor unions from using an individual’s sexual orientation as the basis for employment decisions, such as hiring, firing, promotion or compensation. The bill extends federal employment protections to gay, lesbian, and bisexual workers similar to those already provided to a person based on race, religion, sex, national origin, age or disability. Rep. Anthony Weiner speaks in favor of the rule and the underlying bill.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But Mr. Weiner’s escorting Ms. Abedin under the noses of the campaign press corp is hardly dispositive of anything.

Except perhaps desperation.