Debates Done & Dusted ; Last Round Starts

No-one, again, seemed to emerge blinking into the warm glow of 'winning' after last night's debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

They discussed their healthcare plans at rather dull length for sixteen minutes. They both said how much they respect the other, before making it clear they thought themselves were the best for the job. Plus, the difficult-for-Clinton issue of NAFTA came up. Meanwhile Obama went on about his ability to bring people together.

Tell The Truthiness ; As nice and needed as debates are, enough about them and come on Ohio and Texas!

Saturday Night Live Gets On Obama & Clinton's Cases (& Mike Huckabee Gets On His Own)

Olbermann's Bush Era Timeline 2002-2008

Here is an excellent piece from Countdown of the 'terror' warnings of the last five years and their uncanny closeness to sensitive political incidents for the Bush administration.



Tell The Truthiness ; Worryingly, what could be added to this during the next 331 days before he leaves?

Saunter To The White House 30 ; Lobbyists, Denials & Debate Moments

This weekend the campaigns, for all contenders, have had very different stories to deal with.

John McCain, 'Mr Straight Talk' , has had to explain accusations about a lobbyist who looks uncannily like his wife.

Barack Obama has been telling those alleging he's stolen lines from someone's speeches, that the same man is on his team for the campaign.

And everyone else has been reading into some comments made at the Democratic CNN Debate that Hillary Clinton is readying herself and the country that she may not be the candidate.

Tell The Truthiness ; Get plenty of bed rest, we need to be fresh and alert for Texas and Ohio on the fourth!

Saunter To The White House 29 ; Ten Out Of Ten For Obama, Clinton Ohio/Texas Last Stand

John McCain would do well to take the next month off, since he is, in all but name, the Republican candidate. Not just for the sake of working for something he already has, but to know, in four weeks time who he will be fighting against.

Obama extended his lead, taking Hawaii and Wisconsin yesterday. The Clinton campaign immediately moved on, pinning hopes, again, like happened before, on the next set of states. This time, those hopes are placed in Ohio and Texas. And once again, the next voting date is seen as decisive.

Tell The Truthiness ; This time though, Texas and Ohio will be Hillary Clinton's last stand. Lets hope, for her sake, she has something to pull out of a ten-gallon hat. If she's not wearing one, then Bill probably will.

Bush , FISA, Warmongering & A Special Comment

Here is last night's Special Comment by Keith Olbermann from Countdown on MSNBC.

Saunter To The White House 28 ; Momentum - The Current Winner

Post Super Tuesday and pre everything else, some frustrations appear to be boiling over.

John McCain's attitude to Mike Huckabee seems to be similar to trying to shake something nasty off his shoe. No matter how hard he tries, it still stays there. As done the distinct odour of true republicanism. While Hillary Clinton is trying to play things as cool as possible, resembling a duck who is paddling furiously under the waterline, in an effort just to remain afloat. Don't mention the change in management of her campaign, the delegate numbers showing Obama the leader, her last win being Arizona or anything else.

Tell The Truthiness ; Everything rests with Texas, Clinton's doing a Giuliani. And we all know how that turned out. Gulp.

Saunter To Super Tuesday ; A Racing Certainty & A 50/50

John McCain is leading the Republican field for tomorrow's primaries and caucuses. For the democrats it's once again as unpredictable as a Lost plot line or story arc.

Hillary Clinton, who had a slight comfortable lead nationally, has been caught on a level by an Obama surge in the last few days. Mr Obama gained the endorsement of Maria Shriver, the wife of California governor Schwarzenegger (who endorsed John McCain). Meanwhile Mrs Clinton has remained on a steady footing, not being knocked off by the shivering chance of having Ann Coulter campaign for her, or any blustering from her husband.

John McCain meanwhile has raised the heckles of some GOP senators who fear that people who have had run-ins with him in the past will have to swallow hard and smile when he gets the nomination. Hardly grounds for a united party come election time.

Tell The Truthiness ; Super Tuesday is shaping up to be a real cracker. We live in interesting times.

Saunter To The White House 27 ; 48 Hours Treading Water

With Super Tuesday on, well, Tuesday, all the candidates are banking on repeating their selling points over and over again. The worse thing that can happen now is something unexpected.

Meanwhile, some of the campaigns seem to be more media savvy than others, Barack Obama's music video is the most obvious one after all the internet 'money bombing' and grass roots efforts for libertarian Ron Paul.



Tell The Truthiness ; Can anyone see John McCain supporters doing anything like this?

Saunter To The White House 26 ; Can We Say Killer Ticket?

Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama?

Either way, it's the only certain, bullet-proof way of preventing a Republican White House for the third term in a row. The tit for tat sniping that's been taking place since the beginning of the year, suddenly stopped on debate night.

Have the two camps realised that only one of them will win on Super Tuesday and that a united front has greater odds of winning than a splitting down party lines.

Tell The Truthiness ; There's no chance of that happening with McCain and Romney.

FISA & Wiretapping Special Comment From Keith Olbermann

If you've got shares in any US telecoms giants, then perhaps you should watch this.



Tell The Truthiness ; George Bush and his team needs to be held to account.

Saunter To The White House 25 ; The February Four

It quickly went from "we don't really know", to "we know who it won't be".

Obama, Clinton, Romney, McCain.

While Democrat leaning voters tie themselves in knots, deciding between a black man and a white woman (we're still hoping Michelle Obama will throw her hat into the ring and solve that dilemma), the GOP leaners have to pick either a used-car salesman, or Cold-War-Era-McCain.

In five days the results will be in and, hopefully, unless everything hangs on margins, we'll have a candidate for each party and democracy can be defrosted again. It was last seen being blast frozen by Dick Cheney late in 2001 and hung in a meat locker.

Tell The Truthiness ; Of course, the whole thing could be turned on it's head and on Tuesday everyone might vote for Ron Paul, wouldn't that be something.

355 Days Left ; No-One Expects Anything Anymore

The State Of The Union speech was given by the President this week and, he didn't even try to redeem himself.

Mr Bush is relying heavily on history being his judge. So in thirty or forty years, at least they'll be able to put a name-to-the-face responsible for the state of international relations and delays in environmental protection.

Tell The Truthiness ; No-one is going to mind if Mr Bush just sits quietly in his office and reads some of those books he missed out on. Really, go ahead, put your feet up, you've done enough, you really have.

Look Out, The Latest War Franchise Is Launched

Tell The Truthiness ; Look out Finland, he's after you before January next year!

Saunter To The White House 24 ; Bill Versus Michelle, For The Bored

With all news outlets saying 'the gloves have come off' about Obama and Hillary, since last year, a new match has been scheduled.

For those bored of the Obama/Clinton battle, or truce, whatever it currently is, Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are starting off a parallel battle. Indeed, since most people have noted the difficult choice between the first female president and the first black president, why not have both? Michelle Obama is black and female, there's your 'out of the blue candidate'.

Tell The Truthiness ; It'll be a battle between Michelle and Rudy Giuliani in November! You heard it here first!

PS Whoever gave Giuliani the idea that putting all your eggs in the Florida basket was a good idea? Well, we will see how that went before too long.

Road To Tehran 9 ; Bush Says 'No No No' I'm Right

President Bush has bragged (apparently to reassure) the Israeli Prime Minister that he doesn't actually take any notice of the intelligence community's evidence that Iran has no current nuclear weapons programme.

Indeed, we'll repeat it again, the last time they had a programme was back in 2003, nearly five years ago. The National Intelligence Estimate however has been brushed off in public and totally dismissed as fiction in private by Mr Bush.

Is this an attempt to ratchet up the 'big bad wolf' image of Iran that Bush is desperate to maintain. Or, are these comments the final steps toward a full out invasion before the President's term expires?

Tell The Truthiness ; Someone please stop him. Anyone.

Road To Tehran 8 ; Hormuz Boat Incident A Fake

The Pentagon has backtracked on the exact details of Sunday morning's boat incident between the US and Iran.

Iran was the first to produce evidence that discounts the US claims. Authorities showed footage they said didn't show any of their boats approaching US vessels. Then, the US Navy admitted the voice on the US released tape may not have been Iranian in origin.

Plus, Pentagon officials are also saying the threatening voice on the videotape was recorded separately and added to the tape later.

Tell The Truthiness ; A poorly executed 'false-flag' operation, carried out by an inept government. Expect the actual plan for this to be published tomorrow, written badly on the back of a cheap bar napkin. Just three-hundred and seventy-five days of this administration to go.

Saunter To The White House 23 ; Clintons Go Budgeting

With speculation over what tonight's results will show, another set of numbers are worrying the Clinton campaign. It's being reported that Hillary Clinton's campaign has $15 million to $20 million left out of an initial budget of $100. Campaigners are now weighing up the pros and cons of skipping the Nevada caucus and the South Carolina primary.

The loss cutting, if it was followed through, would allow the Clinton campaign to plough everything into the Super Tuesday push on the 5th February.

Tell The Truthiness ; No doubt the numbers from tonight's result will be just as big an influence on the Clinton campaign as the financial numbers in making a decision.

Road To Tehran 7 ; Meanwhile, A Well-Timed Confrontation For The Bush Administration

On the eve of President Bush's (do you remember him?) visit to the Middle East, a convenient 'confrontation' that seems eerily familiar to the UK sailor hostage situation is being reported.

Looking for anything that could be used as pretext for a strike on Iran, the story of a confrontation between boats US Navy and Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats, is just what the administration has needed. The suggestions that the administration is not beyond a 'Gulf Of Tonkin' style incident is grounded in truth, with the January 2003 story about shooting down a drone aircraft over Iraq, painted in UN colours, as grounds for invading Iraq, discussed between President Bush and Prime Minister Blair.

Tell The Truthiness ; Remember, Iran does NOT have an active nuclear weapons programme. They shut it down in 2003. So no matter how much they might scratch the varnish on the US Navy's rowing boats, it's not a reason at all for Iraq : 2 - The Bad Sequel. Are you listening George?

Saunter To The White House 22 ; Media Goes Into Hyper-Drive Over NH

With about twenty-four hours to go before the New Hampshire Primary it seems the media, not including Chris Matthews, (who's always this wired) is in danger of spinning itself out of control.

New polls seem to be out every half an hour showing that Barack Obama's at 67% and Hillary Clinton's at 5% (those are the latest thirty minute figures). Combine that with the rumour-mill now grinding away, given a push by the Drudge Report, that Hillary Clinton may quit the race tomorrow if she doesn't win in New Hampshire, you'd be forgiven for thinking the election was the 5th of February.

On the Republican side, the great-white-hope pundits and GOP spinners have thrown themselves behind is the great-white John McCain. In addition, the man who overtook Rudy Giuliani in Iowa, Ron Paul, may have more of an impact in New Hampshire, with some speculating that the Fox snub of Ron Paul may garner a public pro-Ron Paul backlash tomorrow.

Tell The Truthiness ; Wait until the results and anything real to happen, instead of this incessant 24/7 spin, from all sides.