NightBlogger

Andrew Malcolm
More details emerging from Denver as we write this in the predawn hours on the now suspected plot to assassinate Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama with a high-powered rifle on national television during his outdoor acceptance speech at Invesco Field Thursday night. Authorities have reported a fourth arrest in the unfolding plot that The Ticket first wrote about here a few hours ago at the end of Monday night’s Democratic National Convention events at the Pepsi Center. Tharin Gartrell, a convicted felon, one of four arrested in Denver in a reported plot to assassinate Senator Barack Obama on national TV during his nomination acceptance speech at Invesco Field Thursday night. We knew then that authorities in suburban Aurora had stopped a pickup truck for swerving between lanes early Sunday morning in what they thought was a routine drunk driving incident. More

George Galloway talks to a caller about an impending attack on Iran.

ABC News
Obama told the caucus, according to an attendee, “Nobody said this to me directly but I get the feeling from my talks that if the sanctions don’t work Israel is going to strike Iran.” Others in the room recall this as well. The notion that Israel is preparing for such an action against Iran’s myriad nuclear facilities is not new, with conjecture heating up in May after an Israeli military exercise featuring 150 aircraft flying almost a thousand miles over the Mediterranean Sea in what was seen as a dress rehearsal for an air strike. More

A man who authorities said was keeping weapons and military-style gear in his hotel room and car appeared in court Thursday on charges he threatened to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. Raymond Hunter Geisel, 22, was arrested by the Secret Service on Saturday in Miami and was ordered held at Miami’s downtown detention center without bail Thursday by a federal magistrate. More

At the campaign stop in Austin, Texas, Nader spoke to an audience of approximately 200 about his campaign’s primary issues in the 2008 presidential election. During the press conference — held in a sweltering classroom at the back of a small, suburban Methodist church — Nader also directly addressed an elderly white woman as a “political bigot.” “What is your answer to people, including myself, who believe that the votes you get will take away from the Democratic party and ensure McCain wins?” asked the woman during Nader’s Q&A with the press. “People who say that a vote for you is a vote for McCain.”

Nader grew tense, and his response to the woman was abrupt. “Madam, do you think I’m a second-class citizen?” he asked. “I’d like for you to answer my question,” said the woman. “No, because that question implies that somehow I am less equal in running for election than two crooked politicians in Washington,” he said. “You are a political bigot, wittingly or unwittingly.” It was during his speech, and after the press conference, that Nader said progressives who will vote for Obama as the “least worst candidate” are actually trapped in “political slavery.” More

U.S.News
Sen. Barack Obama has not been a fan of private police like Blackwater in war zones, and some news outlets even reported that they were spurned for his trip last week to Afghanistan and Iraq. But Whispers confirms that Blackwater did handle the Democratic presidential candidate’s security in Afghanistan and helped out in Iraq. What’s more, Obama was overheard saying: “Blackwater is getting a bad rap.” Since everything appeared to go swimmingly, maybe he will take firms like Blackwater out of his sights, the company’s supporters hope.

You remember Blackwater…

Blackwater Grand Jury Hears Iraqi Witnesses
The FBI has brought four Iraqi witnesses, including the father of a dead 9-year-old boy, to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Blackwater security guards accused of killing 17 innocent civilians last year at a Baghdad traffic square. In interviews with ABC News before leaving Baghdad, the men all said the Blackwater shootings were unprovoked. “It was a true massacre, a slaughter,” said Mohammed Abdul Razak, whose son Ali was killed in the shootings. Razak said he saw the guards first fire at one car and then open fire on other cars, including his. When the shooting stopped he saw his son in the back seat. “He looked asleep, but after I opened the door, his brain fell right between my feet,” he said. “I started shouting, ‘They killed my son,’ but who is listening?” More

Telegraph
The Telegraph has learned that the former president’s rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence. A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could “kiss my ass” in return for his support. More

Thinkprogress.org
On Fox News Sunday this morning, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said that President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to be elected. However, “if the president thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out,” Kristol said, reinforcing the fact that McCain is offering a third Bush term on Iran. “I do wonder with Senator Obama, if President Bush thinks Senator Obama’s going to win, does he somehow think — does he worry that Obama won’t follow through on that policy,” Kristol added. Host Chris Wallace then asked if Kristol was suggesting that Bush might “launch a military strike” before or after the election:

WALLACE: So, you’re suggesting that he might in fact, if Obama’s going to win the election, either before or after the election, launch a military strike?

KRISTOL: I don’t know. I mean, I think he would worry about it. On the other hand, you can’t — it’s hard to make foreign policy based on guesses of election results. I think Israel is worried though. I mean, what is, what signal goes to Ahmadinejad if Obama wins on a platform of unconditional negotiations and with an obvious reluctance to even talk about using military force. More

Obama’s support of FISA and his “groveling before the Israel Lobby…has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference.”

Washington Post
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) today announced his support for a sweeping intelligence surveillance law that has been heavily denounced by the liberal activists who have fueled the financial engines of his presidential campaign. In his most substantive break with the Democratic Party’s base since becoming the presumptive nominee, Obama declared he will support the bill when it comes to a Senate vote, likely next week, despite misgivings about legal provisions for telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program of suspected terrorists.

In so doing, Obama sought to walk the fine political line between GOP accusations that he is weak on foreign policy — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called passing the legislation a “vital national security matter” — and alienating his base. More

Paul Craig Roberts
As articles by John Pilger, Alexander Cockburn, and Uri Avnery make clear, by groveling before the Israel Lobby Obama has dispelled any hope that his presidency would make a difference.

Obama told the Lobby that in order to protect Israel he would use all the powers of the presidency to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. As in the case of Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” the conclusion whether or not Iran is making a nuclear weapon will be determined by propaganda and not by fact. Therefore, there is no difference between Bush, McCain, Obama, and the Lobby with regard to the Middle East.

As Israel has several hundred nuclear weapons, and a modern air force and missiles supplied by the US, the idea that Israel needs American protection from Iran is a fantasy. All Israel needs to do in order to be safe and to live in peace is to stop stealing the West Bank and to drop its designs on southern Lebanon. Obama is too smart not to know that US foreign policy has been Shanghaied by the Lobby not in order to protect innocent Israel but to enable Israel’s territorial expansion.

Obama has dispelled hope on the economic front as well. Obama has appointed two leading apologists for jobs offshoring as his economic advisors–Bill Clinton’s Treasury Robert Rubin and Rubin associate Jason Furman. These two are notorious for their justifications of policies that benefit Wall Street, CEOs, and large retailers at the expense of the economic well being and careers of millions of Americans. More

…Larry Sinclair, a gay man from Minnesota who alleges he snorted cocaine and had sex with the Democratic nominee [Obama], held a news conference. His allegations have been sloshing around on the internet for six months, ever since he posted a YouTube video. But after he took a polygraph test and failed, he has struggled to get mainstream media interest in a story he said began in the back of a limousine in Chicago in 1999.

On Wednesday Sinclair booked a room at the National Press Club to produce the evidence and try to capture the national spotlight for his claims. But he spent much of the time answering questions about himself. He has what is called a colourful background: a 27-year criminal career which includes convictions for fraud, forging cheques, and stealing credit card numbers.

Sinclair was accompanied by his kilt-clad lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley. Sibley has had his own problems: a Florida court struck him off for vexatious litigation, most of it directed against his former wife. “I don’t mean to be impudent,” said one reporter, “but why are you wearing a kilt?” Sibley explained: “It has to do with genitalia. If you are on the smaller side, then pants are not uncomfortable.” More

Libya’s leader has strongly criticised US presidential candidate Barack Obama for saying Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel. Col Muammar Gaddafi said he was either ignorant of the Middle East conflict or lying to boost his campaign.

Mr Obama was speaking to pro-Israel lobbyists in the US last week. Referring to him as “our Kenyan brother”, Col Gaddafi also said Mr Obama might suffer from an inferiority complex because of his African origins. Israel claims Jerusalem as its “eternal, undivided” capital, but the Palestinians want the eastern half - occupied by Israel in 1967 - as the capital of a future Palestinian state. More

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Wednesday said the head of his vice presidential search team and former head of the mortgage giant Fannie Mae had decided to step aside. Obama said in a statement that Jim Johnson had decided to quit the unpaid position in order to avoid distracting from the process of gathering information about possible vice presidential candidates.

Obama appointed Johnson last week to a three-member team heading the search for his running mate, but Johnson became embroiled in a controversy over questionable loans from lender Countrywide Financial. More

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who authorized the protection, says plainclothes Secret Service agents, drawn from a pool of 3,300, backed by some of the 6,500 uniformed Secret Service officers, are providing candidates “the protection they need” during the protracted presidential campaign.

Candidates are not entitled to U.S. Secret Service protection by law until 120 days before the general election. That would be July 8 this year. But Chertoff authorized protection for Obama on May 3, 2007 — 15 months before the law required it — in response to a recommendation by the five-member congressional advisory committee that oversees protection for presidential candidates. More

A first strike attack or invasion of Iran at Israel’s request will lead us all into WWIII. Palestinian leaders reacted with anger and dismay on Wednesday to Barack Obama’s AIPAC pledge that Jerusalem should be Israel’s undivided capital. “The whole world knows that East Jerusalem, holy Jerusalem, was occupied in 1967 and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian.”

Chris Dolmetsch
(Bloomberg)
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said it would be “the worst mistake” for Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee for president, to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate, according to the Guardian.

Carter cited opinion polls showing that half of U.S. voters have a negative view of Clinton, and said choosing the former first lady as vice-presidential candidate would be the “worst mistake that could be made,” the U.K.-based Guardian reported.

Carter formally endorsed Obama for president yesterday, the Guardian said. Carter made the comments in an interview with the newspaper’s weekend magazine that will be published June 7 and was conducted before Obama clinched enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination.

Carter said Obama should pick someone who can compensate for “potential defects,” such as his “youthfulness” and lack of experience in international and military affairs, the Guardian said. The former president said he prefers former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, the newspaper reported.

From NBC’s Domenico Montanaro
Might this be the start of a potential flood. Water is under the door. The towels are down.

Obama’s picked up six in the superdelegate count so far today. He got 3.5 of those between 11:15 a.m. and noon — CA John A. Perez, MA John Olver, and three from Michigan — Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, Debbie Dingell, and Rick Wiener. (Keep in mind, those Michigan delegates count for half.) Dingell’s husband, Rep. John Dingell, is a Clinton endorser.

We reported on 2.5 in First Thoughts — Rep. Jim Clyburn, who came out officially for Obama on TODAY, as well as Michigan superdelegate Joyce Lalonde (half vote) and Missouri’s Maria Chapelle-Nadal.

As far as those Edwards pledged delegates, the remaining two in Iowa will likely announce their choice today. They are working on the details of when, how and, possibly, if it will be packaged with superdelegates.

New Hampshire Edwards pledged delegate Sharon Norgren told First Read she’s remaining uncommitted at least for the “next couple of days.” When asked if she’s leaning way or another, she said, “I don’t want to discuss it.”

By BETH FOUHY
Associated Press Writer
Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president. The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City. She will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, the two senior officials said, the campaign is over. More

TPM
Greg Sargent
In a quick phone interview with me just now, prominent Hillary supporter James Carville diverged from the Hillary campaign message on several key “electability” questions, saying that he thinks Obama “will” win the general election.

Carville, surprisingly, also seemed to downplay Obama’s problems with non-college whites — a cornerstone of Hillary’s electability claim — saying that if Obama gets the same level of non-college whites that John Kerry did in 2004, he “will” win the general.

Asked if he thought Obama would beat McCain, Carville said: “I think he will. I think Democrats will win in November…There’s a crushing desire for change in this country. No one has seen a party or brand held in such low esteem” than the Republicans. More

JOE GANDELMAN
If the latest Gallup Daily tracking poll indicates a trend, Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton will stop pointing to Gallup when she makes her pitch this weekend to a Democratic party committee in Washington in an effort to get the Michigan and Florida delegations seated.

In recent days, Clinton got into political hotwater by claiming “every” poll showed her beating John McCain in a matchup which was not true. She was mostly pointing to Gallup polls, and her later comments were more accurately focused.

But the latest Gallup Daily tracking poll shows rival-for-the-Democratic nomination Senator Barack Obama now regaining his double-digit lead over her among Democrats and statistically tied with Clinton in the votes a Democrat would get against Republican presumptive nominee Senator John McCain. More

News Corp founder Rupert Murdoch gave an interview at the D6 conference recently, and he seemed to favor Barack Obama for the next president of the United States.

MARCUS BARAM
With Sen. Barack Obama on the verge of becoming the first African-American to receive a major party’s presidential nomination, racism and potential security issues are emerging as factors in the race to the White House. In recent weeks, the role of race in the Democratic primaries has been increasingly discussed. And while racist caricatures and jokes about threats against Obama’s life have been widely condemned, they seem to reflect an undeniable element of racism that still exists in the country and could play an unknown role in a general election.

“There is no question that the possibility of violence directed at presidential candidates, especially Obama, is the elephant in the middle of the room,” says Peter Fenn, adjunct professor of political management at George Washington University, to describe the media’s careful coverage of the issue. “There is a hypersensitivity about this issue. And in one sense, there should be because you don’t want to put the idea out there. But you also get overanalysis, like with Hillary’s comments about RFK [Robert F. Kennedy].” More

Mark Liberman
The news is full of headlines about Senator Clinton’s “apology” for her tone-deaf comment about the RFK assassination: “Clinton apologizes for citing RFK killing”; “Clinton apologizes for gaffe”; “Clinton apologizes for Kennedy comment”; “Clinton Sorry for Remark about RFK Assassination”; “Clinton sorry for Kennedy remark”; and hundreds of others.

But from a linguistic point of view, these headlines are wrong. Here’s the evidence: Geoff Pullum’s classic post “Pete Rose and sorry statements of the third kind” (1/13/2004) offered a taxonomy of apologies, based on a pairing of syntactic structures and communicative content: The word sorry is used in three ways. First, sorry can be used with a complement having the form of what The Cambridge Grammar calls a content clause: More

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ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Ever since she realized back in early March that Obama was going to take the nomination Hillary Clinton’s long-term strategy has been to do her best to ensure McCain will win this November so she can become the Democratic nominee in 2012. But she had a short term strategy too and on Friday she deliberately made it explicit in a newspaper office in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There she suggested that some is likely to step up to the plate and assassinate Barack Obama in the waning moments of the California primary, just as Bobby Kennedy was forty years go almost to the day. The wish is mother to the deed. If anything does happen to Obama in California Mrs Clinton should surely be indicted as a co-conspirator.

How to else construe her grotesque remarks in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in the editorial offices of the Argus Leader newspaper. Here she told the editors, “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,” she said, dismissing calls to drop out. Read more

Alex Isenstadt
Politickerca
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama picked up a California superdelegate Friday when U.S. Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Atwater) switched his endorsement from U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) to Obama (D-Ill.).

“This is the most important election of my lifetime. While I continue to greatly respect and admire Senator Clinton and feel she has made history with her campaign, I believe that Senator Obama will inevitably be our party’s nominee for President. He has proven himself to be a thoughtful, knowledgeable, and inspirational leader and will take America in a new direction, which we desperately need,” Cardoza said in a statement.
Read more

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Suzanne Malveaux
CNN
Several close friends and supporters of Hillary Clinton tell CNN they are pushing for a “graceful exit strategy” that would allow the Clinton and Obama camps to come together, and for the New York senator to save face should she fail to become the Democratic nominee for president.

The discussions are not taking place between the campaigns, but rather among informal campaign advisers on both sides who are trying to actively influence and shape the debate as the competition nears a close June 3.
Read more

Video: Jesse Ventura brawls with Mike Reagan on Larry King.
Jesse Ventura: “Mike Reagan, you’re a chickenhawk!”

By Steven Greenhouse
New York Times
Senator Barack Obama’s efforts to woo working-class voters received a sizable boost today, when he received the endorsement of the United Mine Workers of America.

The union, one of the strongest in West Virginia, had originally endorsed former Senator John Edwards, but remained undecided between Senator Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the weeks before the May 13 primary in West Virginia.

But officials in the mine workers union, which represents 105,000 active and retired members, said it was time to endorse Mr. Obama because it seemed clear that he would clinch the Democratic nomination. Read more

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Joe Hanel
Herald Denver Bureau
Seven leading astrologers consulted their charts and came to the unanimous conclusion, which they shared Tuesday at the United Astrology Conference in Denver. Although the crowd of several hundred cheered at the forecast, the seven panelists shared a sense of foreboding.

“There are things that are going to happen in the next couple of months that could turn the game into something different than we think it is right now,” said Shelley Ackerman, a New York City astrologer who appears frequently on television and radio shows.

A time of upheaval is coming, they agreed. Election Day - Nov. 4 - will put Saturn in opposition to Uranus, meaning the two planets are aligned at opposite ends of the zodiac. Saturn symbolizes experience and the establishment. Uranus is the planet of change and youth. When they are opposed, the country sees a period of “revolutionary fervor,” said Raymond Merriman, the panel’s moderator. The last Saturn-Uranus opposition was from 1965-67, a time of drastic cultural change. Read more

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DAVID ESPO and SARA KUGLER
Associated Press
Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Kentucky primary Tuesday, a victory of scant political value in a Democratic presidential race moving inexorably in Barack Obama’s direction. The two rivals also collided in Oregon’s unique vote-by-mail contest, and Obama predicted he would finish the night with a majority of all delegates at stake in the 56 primaries and caucuses on the campaign calendar.

With votes counted from 41 percent of the Kentucky precincts, Clinton was gaining 57 percent support, compared with 40 percent for Obama. Interviews with Kentucky voters leaving their polling places showed Clinton’s victory was roughly as sweeping as the rout she fashioned last week in West Virginia. Almost nine in 10 ballots were cast by whites, and the former first lady was winning their support overwhelmingly. She defeated her rival among voters of all age groups and incomes, the college educated and non-college educated, self-described liberals, moderates and conservatives. Read more

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Ewen MacAskill
The Guardian
Barack Obama is planning to declare himself the effective winner of the long-running contest with Hillary Clinton at the close of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries tomorrow.

At that point, he should have passed one of the last remaining milestones in the race, securing more than half the 3,253 elected delegates. To exploit this he is to shun the tradition of hosting a party in one of those two states after the polls close and instead hold a rally in Iowa, a decision full of symbolism. It was in Iowa on January 3 that Obama won the first of the 49 Democratic contests so far and irretrievably damaged Clinton’s reputation for invincibility.

His campaign team is anxious to bring the contest to a close to reunite the party after the longest primary season since 1980 - and one of the most acrimonious. It also wants to concentrate on the fight against the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, in November. Read more

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AMY SULLIVAN
Time
When the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America announced its endorsement of Barack Obama earlier this week, president Nancy Keenan and her colleagues knew their decision would raise eyebrows. The debate between Obama and Clinton supporters on the organization’s board, according to those familiar with it, was “spirited.”

But they ultimately reached a unanimous decision to throw their support behind Obama, a longtime supporter of abortion rights, and the move was immediately assailed by Clinton supporters as a betrayal. In the process, they added new fuel to a furious debate that has raged mostly below the surface of this campaign, often dividing friend from friend and sister from sister. Do women have an obligation to support a serious woman candidate? Or is gender now simply an interesting but ultimately irrelevant consideration? Read more

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CNN Associate Political Editor Rebecca Sinderbrand

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”
Read more

Justin Raimondo
antiwar.com

No matter how much he grovels, it’s never enough
Poor Obama. No matter how much he tries to placate the Israel lobby, they just won’t take yes for an answer. The Lobby has been after him for months, trying to dig up “evidence” that someone with the middle name of “Hussein” is necessarily an enemy of Israel. The best they could come up with so far were the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads, which didn’t have much of an effect at the polls, as the North Carolina and Indiana primary results – and subsequent national polls – attest.

Yet Obama still keeps trying to appease the Lobby. He’s purged staff members who so much as looked cross-eyed at the Israelis, such as one poor adviser who meekly suggested that talking to Hamas might not be such a bad idea. He was out faster than you can say Mearsheimer and Walt. Read more

Wired: By Sarah Lai Stirland
A couple of new anti-Obama web videos are previewing what could be likely avenues of attack from Republican communications strategists in upcoming months — exploiting voters’ fear of the unknown.

The first is the launch of a new website, CanWeAsk.com, and a video from the Republican National Committee. A voice-over in the video asks pointed rhetorical questions on issues that Obama has taken heat for over the past few months. Among other things, they concern his “voting present” record in the Illinois legislature; his controversial comment at a San Francisco fund-raising event about down-and-out people clinging to their guns and religion; and his relatively brief experience, having served only three years in the U.S. Senate.

At the end of the video, RNC Chairman Robert M. Duncan asserts that America needs a strong leader and that Obama “doesn’t meet the requirements.” Read more

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By Alan Elsner
Reuters
Sunday, May 11, 2008; 10:36 AM

Democrat Barack Obama’s campaign chief predicted on Sunday his protracted battle against Hillary Clinton for the party’s presidential nomination would soon be over, saying “we’re coming to the end of the process.”

Interviewed on “Fox New Sunday,” David Axelrod said undecided superdelegates to the party convention who will decide the nomination were opting for Obama, the Illinois senator who would be America’s first black president if elected in November.

“You’re going to see people (superdelegates) making decisions at a rapid pace from this point on,” he said. “We’ve been announcing several each day for the last few days. We’re going to continue to unfurl these endorsements on a regular basis.” Read more

John Edwards hints he’ll endorse Obama
Edwards said whoever got his vote would get his endorsement.

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ABC News’ Karen Travers Reports: For the first time this campaign season, Barack Obama has surpassed Hillary Clinton’s support among superdelegates, according to the ABC News delegate estimate. Sen. Obama, D-Ill., picked up two superdelegates this morning giving him a new metric to tout in addition to his current commanding leads in pledged delegates, popular votes, states won, and money raised.

Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., switched his endorsement from Clinton to Obama and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., endorsed Obama. DeFazio was previously uncommitted. Read more