From Gallup:

Obama Beats McCain on Most Character Ratings

by Lydia Saad

June 27, 2008

PRINCETON, NJ — In the June 15-19 USA Today/Gallup poll, Barack Obama leads John McCain among registered voters in a presidential preference test, 48% to 42%. The same poll finds Obama swamping McCain in Americans’ perceptions of who has the better grasp of the problems Americans face, while McCain leads Obama by a slight margin as a "strong and decisive leader." …

The two dimensions on which Obama does best relative to McCain — understanding the problems Americans face in their daily lives and caring about "the needs of people like you" — both concern his perceived empathy for average Americans. He outscores McCain by more than 20 percentage points on both of these.

Obama also leads by double digits on two dimensions that tap Americans’ perceptions of the candidates’ political independence: being independent in his thoughts and actions, and standing up to special interests.

Obama performs well on two dimensions related to his effectiveness in achieving public policy objectives: working well with both parties to get things done, and having a clear plan for solving the country’s problems…

Obama and McCain are more closely matched when it comes to their personal ethics or values. Obama leads McCain, but only slightly, on the "shares your values" dimension, while the two are nearly tied in perceptions of who is more "honest and trustworthy."

Obama clearly wins Gallup’s character ratings by volume; the question is whether he wins by a large enough margin on the dimensions that are most important to Americans when electing a president. Obama’s six-point lead in the horse race in the same poll is an important summary indicator suggesting that he does.

(Click on images to enlarge.)

This is nothing less than the victory of our non-stop propagandizing media and our dumbed-down propagandizing education system and "culture."

From an outraged Associated Press:

After-tax incomes and spending show big gains

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON – The millions of economic stimulus payments gave a massive jolt to household finances in May, sending after-tax incomes up by the largest amount in 33 years.

The payments helped boost consumer spending by the largest amount in six months.

The Commerce Department reported that disposable incomes, the amount left after paying taxes, surged by 5.7 percent last month. It was the biggest increase since May 1975, reflecting $48.1 billion in rebate payments made last month. The surge in incomes helped boost consumer spending by 0.8 percent, the biggest gain since last November.

The administration is hoping that the $106.7 billion in stimulus payments being made this year to 130 million households will be enough to offset serious drags on the economy at the moment from a prolonged housing slump, a severe credit crisis and soaring energy bills.

However, economists are worried that the boost from the stimulus checks will be only temporary and once the checks are spent, the risks of the economy falling into a deep recession will increase…

The rebate checks are part of a $168 billion package of tax relief for individuals and businesses that Congress passed in February at the urging of the administration in an effort to give the economy a boost and ward off the threat of a deep recession. The payments began on April 28 and are scheduled to be completed by mid-July.

The Bush administration currently is resisting Democratic calls for a second stimulus package even though economists are worried that the effects of the boost will prove temporary at best. They fear the stimulus will fail to prevent a serious slump in the second half of this year as the economy’s troubles from housing, a severe credit sqeeze [sic] and soaring energy prices mount…

On the face of it this article appears to be surprisingly upbeat, especially coming from the professional doom-sayers of the Associated Press.

But when you unpack it the message is clear. All of these gains are simply due to the "rebate checks" and therefore are temporary at best.

Never mind that there have been several such stimulus packages over the last 33 years without any such dramatic up-ticks in income and spending.

Of course the real motivation for the piece is buried way down in the article:

The Bush administration currently is resisting Democratic calls for a second stimulus package even though economists are worried that the effects of the boost will prove temporary at best.

This entire story is simply a push for a second stimulus package, as now demanded by the AP’s masters.

But isn’t it funny that these selfsame Democrats will fight any permanent tax cuts with their dying breath?

Why is that?

From the Agence France-Pressee:

NKorea blows up nuke plant tower

SEOUL, June 27, 2008 (AFP) – North Korea on Friday blew up the cooling tower of its atomic reactor in a dramatic symbol of its commitment to nuclear disarmament, one day after handing over details of atomic programmes…

The cooling tower at Yongbyon, 96 kilometres (60 miles) north of Pyongyang, was the most visible symbol of the communist state’s decades-old pursuit of nuclear weapons.

It produced the plutonium for a programme which culminated in a nuclear test in October 2006.

The demolition was of symbolic value only since Yongbyon has already been largely disabled under a six party disarmament pact.

But it came a day after the North handed over a long-awaited declaration of its nuclear activities, a move expected to end the stalemate in the six-party negotiations on disarming the poor and isolated state.

US President George W. Bush announced he was partially lifting some Trading With The Enemy Act sanctions in response to the declaration.

He also notified Congress he was removing North Korea from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism, effective after a 45-day review period…

A battery of other sanctions against the North remain in force.

The delisting can also be put on hold if the North fails to meet US demands that it allow its declaration — especially the size of the plutonium stockpile — to be rigorously verified.

The declaration delivered to six-party talks host China was said to give details of nuclear facilities and of Yongbyon’s production over the past two decades of plutonium for bomb-making.

It does not disclose any information on nuclear weapons, an issue to be tackled in the next phase of the six-party deal…

The North is getting one million tons of fuel oil or equivalent energy aid, plus the terrorism delisting, in return for disabling Yongbyon and delivering the declaration.

The six parties — North and South Korea, Japan, Russia, China and the United States — are expected to meet in Beijing early next month.

They will discuss ways to verify the document, complete the disablement and prepare for the final phase: the dismantlement of plants and handover of all nuclear material including weapons.

Those millions of tons of fuel oil might be pretty pricey these days.

But nuclear blackmail seems to pay well.

One wonders why Greenpeace has never tried to put a stop to the North Korea’s nuclear program. Or even Iran’s.

Just kidding. We don’t wonder about that at all.

From Reuters:

Liberal leader Stephane Dion leaves Parliament Hill after announcing his party’s carbon tax plan in Ottawa June 19, 2008.

North America’s 1st carbon tax rolls out under fire

By Allan Dowd

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – Civic leader Scott Nelson says he is as worried as anyone about global warming, but that does not make him happy to be one of the first North Americans to pay a carbon tax to curb climate change.

Nelson, mayor of Williams Lake, British Columbia, says record high energy prices mean that the levy, for all its good intentions, could not come at a worst time for residents in his community, a lumber and ranching town about 525 km (340 miles) north of Vancouver.

"The last thing they need now is a tax on top of these soaring prices to add insult to injury," said Nelson, predicting that a taxpayer revolt will eventually scuttle the new tax, which takes effect on July 1.

Carbon taxes already exist in Europe. But the tax on fossil fuels will make the Pacific province of British Columbia the first North American jurisdiction to bring in a broad-based levy designed to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases that are blamed for global warming.

The provincial government unveiled the tax in February, calling it a key element in a pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent by 2020.

The tax applies to nearly all fossil fuels, including gasoline and home heating fuel, starting at C$10 per tonne of carbon emissions in 2008 and increasing by C$5 a tonne annually for the next four years.

For drivers that will mean an additional 2.41 Canadian cents on a liter of gasoline (about 9.13 cents per U.S. gallon) starting on Tuesday. The current gas price in Vancouver, British Columbia’s biggest city, is around C$1.40 a liter.

The government says the tax is designed to reduce carbon use, and not generate new revenue. It is cutting other taxes to offset the carbon tax take, and mailing a one-time C$100 rebate out to each British Columbia resident this week.

But critics say it is nothing more than a new gasoline tax that unfairly targets the poor and rural residents who have no choice but to travel long distances in a province that is the size of Germany and France combined.

The opposition left-leaning New Democratic Party has launched an "axe the tax" campaign. The party says it would aim carbon taxes only at businesses and major industrial emitters not at individual consumers.

Environmentalists acknowledge that the tax is coming at a difficult time, but they want the provincial government to stick with its plan as an example for others.

"I think reversing it would be a huge setback for effective government action on this issue, certainly in Canada and I perhaps in all of North America," said Matthew Bramley of the Pembina Institute, an environmental research group…

The tax’s supporters deny that the new tax will hurt the economy, and they say not dealing with the issue will cost the province far more in the long run as it grapples with the impact of climate change…

One hopes that the people who are forcing through these taxes, based entirely upon lies, will be one remembered for all the harm they did.

And most especially those in the media.

This tidbit from Open Secrets seems to have slipped by without much media mention:

Countrywide’s Campaign Contributions Weren’t Loans, But They Were Investments

Published by Irene Kan on June 18, 2008

… Sen. Dodd, who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the mortgage industry, has collected $10,000 from the company this election cycle. He has collected $20,000 from Countrywide’s PAC during his career, putting him just after the Democrat’s presidential nominee-to-be, Sen. Barack Obama, for most contributions to a senator.

Obama joined Dodd in co-sponsoring a housing relief bill that would encourage lenders to refinance and stabilize existing mortgages. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the other senator reported to have benefited from a lower mortgage rate from Countrywide, has received $9,000 in campaign contributions from the company during his congressional career…

This seems somewhat difficult to believe, and it is hard to find any additional support for this claim in the FEC records.

But buried on the corrections page of the Hartford (CT) Courant we find:

Correction

June 26, 2008

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., received $20,000 in campaign contributions from Countrywide Financial Corp. over the past two decades, more than any senator except Barack Obama, D-Ill., who received $22,900 in that period.

A June 19 story on Page A3 incorrectly reported that Dodd had received $25,000 and was the Senate’s top recipient of Countrywide contributions during that time. The incorrect information was published on the website of the Center for Responsive Politics, which gets information from the Federal Election Commission.

Both the center and the FEC corrected their figures on Wednesday. A related story is on Page A3.

Given that we are talking about over the time span of the last ten years, and that Mr. Obama has only been on the national scene since 2004, it is hard to believe that his contributions from Countrywide would be so high.

Mr. Dodd was also a Presidential candidate, as was Mrs. Clinton until very recently. And of course so is Mr. McCain and so was Mr. Kerry.

So why has Countrywide given so much money to Mr. Obama?

Obama joined Dodd in co-sponsoring a housing relief bill that would encourage lenders to refinance and stabilize existing mortgages.

Does it really just come down to this? Or is there more to this story?

(Thanks to NotSoYoungJim for the initial heads up, as well as the additional documentation.)

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Obama says he avoided city, state corruption

June 25, 2008

BY ABDON M. PALLASCH Political Reporter/apallasch@suntimes.com

Clout and corruption scandals that have plagued Chicago and Illinois politics in recent years have not laid a glove on Barack Obama, he told reporters here Wednesday.

"You will recall that for my entire political career here, I was not the the endorsed candidate of any political organization here," the Democratic presidential hopeful said at the Westin Hotel downtown. "I didn’t go around wielding a bunch of clout. My reputation in Springfield was as an independent. There is no doubt I had friends and continue to have friends who come out of the more traditional school of Chicago politics but that’s not what launched my political career and that’s not what I’ve ever depended on to get elected, and I would challenge any Chicago reporter to dispute that basic fact."

Obama friend Tony Rezko was convicted of corrupting state government, but Obama was never implicated and has returned contributions Rezko made to his Senate campaign. Obama did run as an independent Democrat but worked closely with state Senate President Emil Jones, an old-school organization Democrat. Obama runs for president with the full blessing of Mayor Daley…

Mr. Obama’s claims stand in sharp contrast to the firsthand account from a reporter who covered his early career in the Illinois State house.

Mr. Spivak’s experiences were chronicled in a Houston Press article we posted back in March:

Barack Obama and Me

By Todd Spivak
Published: February 28, 2008

… But what’s interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

Republicans controlled the Illinois General Assembly for six years of Obama’s seven-year tenure. Each session, Obama backed legislation that went nowhere; bill after bill died in committee. During those six years, Obama, too, would have had difficulty naming any legislative ­achievements [sic].

Then, in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor’s office as well as both legislative chambers.

The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James “Pate” Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor.

Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama’s. He became Obama’s kingmaker.

Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city’s most popular black call-in radio ­program.

I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

“He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.’”

“Oh, you are? Who might that be?”

“Barack Obama.”

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

“I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen,” State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. “Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

“I don’t consider it bill jacking,” Hendon told me. “But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.”

During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama’s stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics — and he couldn’t have done it without Jones.

Before Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was virtually unknown even in his own state. Polls showed fewer than 20 percent of Illinois voters had ever heard of Barack Obama.

Jones further helped raise Obama’s profile by having him craft legislation addressing the day-to-day tragedies that dominated local news ­headlines.

For instance. Obama sponsored a bill banning the use of the diet supplement ephedra, which killed a Northwestern University football player, and another one preventing the use of pepper spray or pyrotechnics in nightclubs in the wake of the deaths of 21 people during a stampede at a Chicago nightclub. Both stories had received national attention and extensive local coverage…

So how has Obama repaid Jones?

Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones’s Senate district.

Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view on pork-barrel spending.

I’ll never forget what he said:

“Some call it pork; I call it steak.” …

And there is a lot more similar information in Mr. Spivak’s report. Such as Mr. Obama’s strange habit of winning elections by publishing the divorce records of his opponents:

Three years later, in January 2003, Obama announced his bid for the U.S. Senate, where he cruised to victory thanks to the self-destruction of his top opponents in both the primary and general elections.

Obama joined a crowded field of seven candidates vying to fill an open Senate seat being vacated by retiring two-term incumbent Peter Fitzgerald. For months, he polled in the middle-of-the-pack behind frontrunner and former securities trader Blair Hull, who spent $30 million of his own fortune on the primary.

But Hull’s campaign imploded just weeks before the election when his divorce files were unsealed, revealing an ex-wife’s charges of verbal and physical abuse.

Obama unleashed a barrage of television ads just before the election, when the other candidates had largely depleted their war chests. He won the nomination with 53 percent of the vote.

In the general election, Obama squared off against another multimillionaire: Jack Ryan, who later dropped out of the race after a judge ordered his divorce files unsealed. The documents revealed that Ryan’s ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, a former Miss Illinois best known for her role as Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager, accused him of trying to coerce her to perform sex acts in public…

Three years later, in February 2007, Obama announced his bid for the White House in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln had made his famous House Divided speech.

But maybe this isn’t the record of events Mr. Obama thought he knew. For as he says:

There is no doubt I had friends and continue to have friends who come out of the more traditional school of Chicago politics but that’s not what launched my political career and that’s not what I’ve ever depended on to get elected…

Testify!

Here is an RNC ad from May which reminds us of Mr. Obama’s previous positions on the Second Amendment:

Obama And The Second Amendment

The right to bear arms is one of the fundamental ideals on which our nation was founded.

Hardworking, law-abiding Americans have for generations enjoyed this freedom in their communities and with their families.

But Barack Obama believes that many Americans simply ‘cling’ to guns in times of economic distress. Speaking behind closed doors to an audience of San Francisco donors Barack Obama said "they cling to guns or religion …. as a way to explain their frustrations"

Obama’s anti-gun record is long.

In 2004, he voted against legislation drafted to protect homeowners from prosecution in cases where they used a firearm to halt a home invasion.

In 2003, he voted in support of legislation that would have effectively banned most of the privately held hunting shotguns, target rifles, and black powder rifles in Illinois.

And in 1996, Obama supported a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns.

But now Obama’s running for President and claims no knowledge of this, even though his handwriting is all over it.

Barack Obama: Out of touch with American values. Not ready to lead.

Compare and contrast that with Mr. Obama’s "nuanced" comments about the Supreme Court’s decision from today.

From a deeply disappointed Reuters:

Supreme Court finds individual right to own guns

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, for the first time in U.S. history, that individual Americans have the right to own guns for personal use, and struck down a strict gun control law in the nation’s capital.

The landmark 5-4 ruling marked the first time in nearly 70 years the high court has addressed whether the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects an individual right to keep and bear arms, rather than a right tied to service in a state militia.

Writing the court’s majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said the Second Amendment protected an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.

Although an individual now has a constitutional right to own guns, that new right is not unlimited, wrote Scalia, a hunter.

The ruling came the day after a worker at a plastics plant in Henderson, Kentucky, used a handgun to shoot and kill five people inside the factory before killing himself, the latest in a series of deadly shooting sprees across the country…

The court struck down the nation’s strictest gun control law adopted in Washington D.C., 32 years ago. It bans private possession of handguns and requires that any rifles or shotguns kept at home be unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock.

The justices split along conservative-liberal lines in the ruling, one of the most important of the court’s current term, in deciding a legal battle over gun rights in America. The ruling came on the last day of the court’s 2007-08 term.

President George W. Bush’s two appointees on the court, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both voted with the majority in finding an individual right to keep firearms.

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, "The decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States."

Of course we agree whole-heartedly with this "ruling."

In dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, "The decision threatens to throw into doubt the constitutionality of gun laws throughout the United States."

No it doesn’t. It makes it clear they are unconstitutional. But the left and the media (but I repeat myself) will pretend otherwise.

The ruling came the day after a worker at a plastics plant in Henderson, Kentucky, used a handgun to shoot and kill five people inside the factory before killing himself, the latest in a series of deadly shooting sprees across the country.

Not that they are biased or anything.

Still, this decision and the breathless anticipation surrounding it is a symptom of a far deeper problem that such a clearly enunciated right should have ever been in question.

So why do we need to wait on tenterhooks for an interpretation of the text by these black-robed mullahs?

Worse yet, what is to stop a future court, one with several Obama-nominating justices, from declaring this decision in error, and issuing a fatwa against all gun ownership.

No, this is not what the framers of the Constitution envisioned. In fact, it is the opposite.

We were to be a nation of laws, not men.

From the wire services:

Mind you, this is the same man who would not wear a flag pin. The same man at whose rallies there were seldom any (US) flags.

Of course one might object that these pictures are just the work of the news media’s photographers.

But where does our media leave off and the Obama campaign begin?

From a suddenly skeptical Associated Press:

Bush administration lifts North Korea sanctions

By DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – President Bush said Thursday he will lift key trade sanctions against North Korea and remove it from the U.S. terrorism blacklist, a remarkable turnaround in policy toward the communist regime he once branded as part of an "axis of evil."

The announcement came after North Korea handed over a long-awaited accounting of its nuclear work to Chinese officials on Thursday, fulfilling a key step in the denuclearization process.

Bush called the declaration a positive step along a long road to get the nation to give up its nuclear weapons. Yet, he remained wary of the regime, which has lied about its nuclear work before. And North Korea’s declaration, received six months late, falls short of what the administration once sought, leaving it open to criticism from those who want the U.S. to take an even tougher stance against the regime.

"We will trust you only to the extent you fulfill your promises," Bush said in the Rose Garden. "I’m pleased with the progress. I’m under no illusions. This is the first step. This isn’t the end of the process. It is the beginning of the process." …

Specifically, Bush said the U.S. would erase trade sanctions under the Trading With the Enemy Act, and notify Congress that, in 45 days, it intends to take North Korea off the State Department list of nations that sponsor terrorism.

"If North Korea continues to make the right choices it can repair its relationship with the international community … If North Korea makes the wrong choices, the United States and its partners in the six-party talks will act accordingly," Bush said…

Notice how the Associated Press wants to make Mr. Bush appear foolish for ever having called North Korea part of an "Axis Of Evil."

And yet at the same time they want to portray him as naive for now accepting their pronounced nuclear intentions.

However, when Mr. Clinton signed an agreement promising untold millions of dollars in material and financial aid, despite their continuing their weapons programs, it was hailed by our watchdog media as an unqualified diplomatic success.

But getting the same North Koreans to take actual verifiable steps towards dismantling their nuclear program gets at best "mixed reviews" from our unbiased press.

From the Agence France-Pressee:

Enlarge

Volcanic eruptions reshape Arctic ocean floor: study

Wed Jun 25

PARIS (AFP) – Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.

The eruptions — as big as the one that buried Pompei — took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia.

Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms.

But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts finally got a first-ever glimpse of the ocean floor 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) beneath the Arctic pack ice, they were astonished.

What they saw was unmistakable evidence of explosive eruptions rather than the gradual secretion of lava bubbling up from Earth’s mantle onto the ocean floor…

The mid-ocean ridge runs 84,000 kilometres (52,000 miles) beneath all the world’s major seas except the Southern Ocean, and marks the boundary between many of the tectonic plates that make up the surface of the Earth.

When continental plates collide into each other, they can thrust up mountain ranges such as the Himalayas.

But along most of the mid-ocean ridge — including the Gakkal Ridge — the plates are pulling apart, allowing molten magna and gases trapped beneath the crust to escape…

Both sonar and visual images showed an ocean valley filled with flat-topped volcanos up to two kilometres (1.2 miles) wide and several hundred metres high.

Er, is it not possible that these volcanic eruptions — going back to at least 1999 — may have played a part in whatever melting there has been of the Greenland and Arctic ice sheets?

If there has even been any.

Enlarge

For according to the global warming cultists scientists at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, the amount in ice began to decline precipitously in around 1999, which is when these volcanoes began their eruption.

But isn’t it funny how not one word about the purported simultaneous decline in arctic ice was ever mentioned in the original article?

Why do you suppose that is?

(Thanks to Rightwinger for the heads up.)

First, the pay-off, as reported by a delighted and relieved Associated Press:

Obama shares fundraisers with Clinton

By JIM KUHNHENN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic nominee-in-waiting Barack Obama is sharing one his most valuable assets — his top fundraisers — with former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton to help her pay off her debt, the latest effort to heal the wounds of a bruising primary campaign.

Obama on Tuesday asked his finance team to help Clinton pay back at least $10 million from her failed presidential campaign, setting the stage for joint appearances by the two former rivals later in the week.

In a teleconference with his top fundraisers, Obama asked them to do what they could to help Clinton, according to two Democrats familiar with the call. A campaign spokesman confirmed that Obama had asked them to help the former first lady.

"Some of our donors have asked and Barack said if they have the ability to raise or give money to help on debt, we encourage them to do so," spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Obama’s green light to his money bundlers came two days before he and Clinton were scheduled to meet in Washington with some of her top fundraisers in a show of unity after their bruising contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, the two planned to campaign together in New Hampshire…

And what $10 million dollars now buys:

Hillary Clinton to renew call for unity

By Edward Luce in Washington

June 25 2008

In her concession speech less than three weeks ago, Hillary Clinton urged supporters to transfer their loyalties to her rival: “Today I am standing with Barack Obama to say ‘Yes we can’,” she said. “We will make history together as we write the next chapter in America’s story.”

On Thursday evening, at Mrs Clinton’s first joint meeting with Mr Obama since the campaign began, the former First Lady will renew her call for the party to unify behind Mr Obama – a theme that will be echoed on Friday when they appear for a rally in the town of Unity in New Hampshire…

Though it might be more accurate to say that he is just renting her.

By the way, in all too typical fashion the Financial Times goes on to report:

But a highly vocal minority of Mrs Clinton’s supporters have chosen to ignore her plea altogether. Under the umbrella group, Just Say No Deal, diehard Clintonites have set up more than 100 anti-Obama websites in the last 20 days, most of them boiling with indignation…

Many of the sites are run by women who believe that Mrs Clinton was the victim of a sexist alliance between the mainstream media and Mr Obama’s campaign. Yet much of the language they deploy could easily be mistaken for what comes out of right-wing talk radio.

“Voting for Obama is like going to bed with your rapist,” said one supporter in an e-mail that was circulated to a Clinton support group. “Hillary has raised money for these people, campaigned for them and they betrayed her. Now you all want her to be a “nice girl” and hand her political base over to Obama. You must be daft.” …

Even the FT has to get in a dig at "right-wing talk radio."

One supposed they have to prove their loyalty to their Democrat masters like everyone else.