DEM Primaries/Candidates thread

[Jimbo's Drinker]

any early exit polls?

[BigSqwert]

Not sure if this was already posted in this thread. Pretty cool tool for figuring out delegate math.

 

http://www.slate.com/features/delegatecounter/

[BigSqwert]

This made me chuckle:

 

Craig disputed Clinton's claims that she played important roles in Ireland and the Balkans.

 

"She has talked about a dangerous mission to Bosnia, but news reports indicate that she was accompanied on that trip by Sinbad and Cheryl Crow," he said.

 

LINK

[BigSqwert]

Interesting comparisons of the 2 candidates' websites.

[mr_genius]

Craig disputed Clinton's claims that she played important roles in Ireland and the Balkans.

 

"She has talked about a dangerous mission to Bosnia, but news reports indicate that she was accompanied on that trip by Sinbad and Cheryl Crow," he said.

 

 

But that might help her with the Dem voting block that takes their queue from Hollywood stars. Even though I'm not really sure Sinbad is a star.

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

I need to confirm this on my own, but...

Hillary's ad: debate footage doctored to make Obama blacker

 

Quick Update:

Big Update and Lying Campaign Denial:

 

Apparently this got a little MSM attention. Hillary's campaign responded by blatantly lying about the source of the ad in this diary. Such dishonesty makes their denial of nefarious motives that much less plausible:

Despite the strong similarities between the ad on the DailyKos site and the original ad on Clinton’s Web site, Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said he spoke with the campaign’s chief ad maker, Mandy Grunwald, who said emphatically the ad on DailyKos "was not their ad."

 

"We don’t know what is up there, but it is not our ad," Carson said.

 

He's lying. The YouTube video I embedded is from the campaign's official YouTube user hillaryclintondotcom, but if it needs to be any more clear, you can watch the ad for yourself on Hillary's website in Hillary's media player. The skin tone is the same.

Edited March 4, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

[The Bones]

Not sure if this was already posted in this thread. Pretty cool tool for figuring out delegate math.

 

http://www.slate.com/features/delegatecounter/

 

So...if Hillary sweeps with 58% of the vote from Ohio until the end she will pass Obama in total pledged delegates by a count of 1,606 to 1,603. I really don't see this happening for her.

[BigSqwert]

From MSNBC regarding yesterday's primaries/caucuses:

Bottom line: According to MSNBC's current projections she could net anywhere from seven to a bit over 10 delegates.

 

This, obviously, is hardly major progress, given Obama's overall pledged delegate lead of roughly 150 or more. But it's more than some commentators were predicting she'd gain.

[thedoctor]

so, has obama withdrawn from the campaign yet?

[Balta1701]

Another 3 months of this sh*t. Thank God.

[StrangeSox]

I have lost interest in election 2008 again. Wake me up after the infighting.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I have lost interest in election 2008 again. Wake me up after the infighting.

I thought that last night as well. i am pretty much shutting myself off from the major 24/7 news networks. I'm overloaded. I already voted, i dont need to follow this until there is a nominee. Then I get to vote foe Barack or Ralph Nader (if Hillary is nominated)

Edited March 5, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

[BigSqwert]

Memo issued today by David Plouffe:

 

The Clinton campaign today maintained that “the vetting of Barack Obama has just begun.” The truth is, more than a year into this campaign, some very simple vetting of Hillary Clinton has yet to start.

 

In the face of her unwillingness to release her tax returns, Hillary Clinton has made the false case in this campaign that she is more electable because she has been fully vetted. When it comes to her personal finances, Senator Clinton’s refusal to release her taxes returns denies the media and the American people the opportunity to even begin that process. Though her campaign has tried to kick the issue down the road, Democratic voters deserve to know, right now, why it is she is hiding the information in her tax returns from last year.

 

The Clinton campaign has said that they have released copious amounts of financial information but there are many questions about their private dealings that could be answered in their tax returns but not in the information that is currently available. For example, here are eight pieces of information that could be learned from her tax returns, the accompanying schedules, and attachments:

 

* Effective tax rate – including whether or not any tax shelters were used to reduce it

* Amount of income for spouses by source

* Amount of stock gains and losses

* Gross income for the couple

* Amount earned from stock dividends

* Amount of household employment taxes paid

* Personal exemptions taken

* Charitable contributions made

 

Senator Clinton has also claimed that she is too “busy” to release her tax returns. Given the fact she is able to loan her campaign $5 million, you would think the Clintons would be able to hire an accountant. The reality is that she wants to keep this information hidden from voters. The people of Wyoming, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and the rest of the country should wonder why.

[kapkomet]

Memo issued today by David Plouffe:

Hillary is now your nominee. Face it.

 

[BigSqwert]

Hillary is now your nominee. Face it.

You basically posted this same thing 100 times over the last 2 months. Please add a bit more to the discussion.

[iamshack]

Hillary is now your nominee. Face it.

 

Here we go again...

 

As to the tax returns, I'm not sure why that should be anyone's business, honestly. The one reason I wouldn't mind them being released, however, is the fact that she always claims that the Bush Administration has benefitted "the wealthy and the well-connected." What are the Clinton's if not wealthy and well-connected?

Edited March 5, 2008 by iamshack

[BigSqwert]

As to the tax returns, I'm not sure why that should be anyone's business, honestly.

It's about transparency. She loaned her campaign $5M last month. Where did the $5M come from? Last I checked a US Senator isn't making millions.

Edited March 5, 2008 by BigSqwert

[kapkomet]

You basically posted this same thing 100 times over the last 2 months. Please add a bit more to the discussion.

You're right, I've not waivered from that stance. As I've said the same 100 times, I hope Obama can overcome, but if (well now, it's almost for certain) he doesn't have the nomination in hand before Denver, it's over for Obama. There's no way in hell that Obama gets the nomination over Clinton without outright winning the number of delegates it takes to win. It will really surprise me unless a whole slew of people shift over to Obama to shift the counts necessary for him to win (superdelegates). Clinton's dream happened last night: she didn't lose, Obama did. And what's worse, she did it the Clinton Machine way... going negative.

[iamshack]

It's about transparency. She loaned her campaign $5M last month. Where did the $5M come from? Last I checked a US Senator isn't making millions.

 

We all know where it came from. She's married- and her husband happens to be an ex-President. Who wrote a book. Gets paid lavish amounts to make speeches, all over the world.

 

I mean, honestly, I like the idea of everything being "transparent." But nibbling at things like these is where I start to get frustrated with the political process. I don't care what her finances are. I care about her ability to lead this country. I'm fairly sure they do quite well for themselves, through some measures that are more genuine than others. But I honestly don't need to see her tax returns, and I don't think it should be some big issue.

[thedoctor]

It's about transparency. She loaned her campaign $5M last month. Where did the $5M come from? Last I checked a US Senator isn't making millions.

 

she has said she would come clean on this, no?

 

as an unrelated aside, i saw bears coach lovie smith speak this morning here in columbus. lovie is a big barack fan, which i did not know.

[mr_genius]

This race is definitely coming down to the super delegates. Good old Democrat party democracy

 

 

Hillary probably wins Pennsylvania and that will help her with the supers. I just want to see the fallout if Hillary loses the voted delegates, but the supers give her the nomination.

[southsider2k5]

It's about transparency. She loaned her campaign $5M last month. Where did the $5M come from? Last I checked a US Senator isn't making millions.

 

Her husband is making some big bank though...

 

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/polit...shed_in_on.html

 

ill Clinton has cashed in on appearances

 

By Andrew Zajac

 

In December 2004, former President Bill Clinton made a much-publicized appearance at a launch party in New York for Accoona, a new Internet search engine billing itself as a rival to Google.

 

Clinton's presence at the gathering at Tavern on the Green in Central Park was a coup for the unheralded, privately held Accoona, which paid for the former president's appearance by issuing options for 200,000 shares of stock to Clinton's charity, the William J. Clinton Foundation. In 2006, the Clinton Foundation sold the shares for $700,000.

 

Another celebrity hired by Accoona, Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, did not fare as well. Kasparov also was paid in stock options, but his agent said he has not exercised them because his financial advisers told him last year that the shares were worth less than their $1 option exercise price.

 

The Clinton Foundation's good fortune with Accoona stock is among several lucrative transactions involving the former president's personal and charitable finances. Since leaving office in 2001, Clinton has wiped out millions of dollars in legal bills and become a multi-millionaire through a brisk schedule of speechmaking and book-writing, as well as a pair of consulting and investing agreements that have yielded as-yet-undisclosed sums.

 

Clinton also raised more than $362 million for his foundation through 2006 and secured pledges for billions more.

 

Interest in Clinton's financial dealings has intensified since Hillary Clinton lent her presidential campaign $5 million in January. She has been asked in nationally televised debates whether she would disclose tax returns or persuade the former president to release information about his charitable pursuits.

 

But evaluating the transactions is difficult because both Clintons, while complying with legal filing requirements, have somewhat limited disclosure of their finances.

 

See the rest of the story in today's Tribune:

 

With respect to the Accoona stock, for example, Clinton's foundation reported the sale of shares for $700,000 on its 2006 IRS-mandated financial statement for tax-exempt organizations. But the foundation was not legally required to report the initial receipt of Accoona shares, and it did not do so.

 

The foundation also declined to disclose to whom it sold the stock. "The foundation sold its shares through a broker in 2006," Clinton Foundation spokesman Ben Yarrow said in an e-mail.

 

Accoona's chief financial officer, William Rose, also declined to disclose the buyer or to give the stock's current value. Accoona did not buy back the stock and the buyer had no connection to his firm "that I'm aware of," Rose said Monday.

 

Valuing shares in privately held start-ups can be difficult because they often don't have an earnings track record and the price sometimes is pegged to the hope of future earnings based on announcements of promising partnerships or technology.

 

Speaking generally, James Schrager, a professor of entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, said, "When you have a political figure involved, many times the terms are arranged in advance."

 

The $700,000 the Clinton Foundation received for its stock is more than four times the $150,000 Clinton typically commands for appearances in the New York area. The amount startled Kasparov's agent, Owen Williams, who said he regrets not setting different terms for his client's appearance.

 

Williams declined to say how many options Kasparov received but said the chess champion and one-time Russian presidential candidate was advised last year that exercising them "was not a good expenditure of Garry's money. ... Our financial guy said, `You will not make money buying those shares at $1.' ... He didn't exercise his options."

 

The markets seemed to agree. Twice in the last year, Accoona filed, and subsequently withdrew, plans for a public offering, once on London's AIM market and more recently in the U.S. on the NASDAQ exchange.

 

Accoona's prospectus for its aborted U.S. offering pointed to some of its difficulties. The company never had made a profit; a co-founder and major shareholder had pleaded guilty to a felony fraud charge; and Accoona's key partner is a media company controlled by the Chinese government, which often is criticized for censoring the Internet.

 

There is nothing illegal or improper about former presidents making paid appearances. Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan all earned hefty fees on the lecture circuit.

 

Clinton's situation is more complicated because he is involved in a global web of commercial and philanthropic relationships. And he is subject to more scrutiny than his retired peers because his spouse is running for president.

 

Sen. Clinton has been challenged during the campaign to take the voluntary steps of releasing her tax returns and disclosing donors to the Clinton Foundation.

 

The Clinton campaign said in an e-mail that the candidate would release "tax information at tax time in April" but did not commit to releasing the returns themselves.

 

Clinton's Democratic rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, has released his tax returns. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, has not done so.

 

The Clinton Foundation's funding stream has been a sensitive topic since the former president was assailed by members of Congress for reportedly accepting a $450,000 library contribution from the ex-wife of fugitive financier Marc Rich shortly before pardoning Rich for tax evasion in 2001, just before Clinton left the White House.

 

The Clinton campaign said the Clinton Foundation would release a list of future donors if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

 

Contributors to the Clinton Presidential Library, which was paid for by the Clinton Foundation, gave with the "understanding that they may remain anonymous as provided by law," the Clinton campaign said in its statement. "Retroactively revising the rules would be unfair."

 

At the same time, at least twice previously the foundation or a related organization has released names of donors.

 

In 2004, a publicly accessible computer terminal at the Clinton Presidential Library briefly held a list of contributors to the facility. After The New York Sun published the list, the computer went dark.

 

The givers included charitable foundations, longtime political supporters and a smattering of foreign governments, including those of Qatar, Taiwan, Brunei and Kuwait. The Saudi royal family also contributed.

 

Foreign governments also have donated to other presidential libraries, including that of Clinton's predecessor, George H.W. Bush, and President Bush last week said he would consider foreign contributions for his library.

 

In 2005, the IRS filing for the Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative Inc., a charity that subsequently was folded into the Clinton Foundation, voluntarily listed donors who gave more than $5,000.

 

About two-thirds of the $16 million in the organization--more than $9.7 million--came from foreign organizations. Other major donors included the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

 

The largest donation, $4.5 million, came from the London-based Children's Investment Fund Foundation, the charitable arm of The Children's Investment Fund, a large hedge fund.

 

In some cases, contributions to the Clinton Foundation have come to light because they were made in exchange for an appearance by Clinton. That was the case with his appearance on behalf of Accoona, which was trying to build buzz about its prospects.

 

It's not clear who invited Clinton. Current Accoona CEO Val Zammit said the event occurred prior to his tenure. A person answering the phone of former CEO Stuart Kauder said he would have no comment.

 

Accoona's former chairman, Eckhard Pfeiffer, who previously had been CEO of Compaq Computer Corp., could not be reached for comment.

 

Kasparov was recruited to help Accoona by its co-founder, Armand Rousso, whose background includes a lengthy career as a chess impresario. But Rousso's background also includes a conviction for securities fraud in France and a guilty plea to a similar charge in the U.S. in 1999, according to a prospectus for Accoona's short-lived U.S. public offering. The charges did not pertain to Accoona.

 

Rousso owns about 14 percent of Accoona's shares and was paid $3 million for consulting for Accoona from 2004 to 2006, the prospectus states.

 

Rousso could not be reached for comment.

 

Accoona's main partner is China Daily Information Co., a subsidiary of Chinese government-run China Daily, the country's largest English-language newspaper, which has put the Accoona search engine on the front page of the Web version of its paper.

 

Accoona's prospectus acknowledged that the company is subject to censorship by the Chinese government and that the "Ministry of Public Security has the authority to order any local Internet service provider to block any Internet Web site at its sole discretion. ... Furthermore, we are required to report any suspicious content to relevant governmental authorities."

 

Clinton aide Yarrow said the former president has defended dissenters using the Internet in China.

[southsider2k5]

You basically posted this same thing 100 times over the last 2 months. Please add a bit more to the discussion.

 

Come on, I know last night wasn't good for you, but pretty much everyone has been saying the samethings for the last two months, yourself included.

[mr_genius]

Hillary hinting at Obama as VP?

 

http://wcbstv.com/topstories/clinton.obama...t.2.669799.html

 

I wonder if he would accept. If I was him, I sure as hell wouldn't.

[Reddy]

i am so effing torn. i am all over clinton's policies, but i think obama has the better chance of winning... damn this all is just getting frustrating to me. can we stop see-sawing and just pick a f***ing nom?