As front pagers have noted, the corporate media has been stunningly silent about the recent NY Times piece that showed how the Pentagon used retired military officers as "message force multipliers" to prop up support for the occupation of Iraq.  

In short, there was a systematic war of propaganda waged against the American public, with the corporate media and even PBS acting as ideological sycophants.

I was expecting some significant flak from the corporate press and the Pentagon on this issue.  Yet it was total silence rather than flak that emerged.

That said...

Recent polling from Indiana shows a Clinton lead, with the opposite true in North Carolina.  See the recent post by Kos for the numbers on NC (12-14 points), and see SUSA for IN (9 points).

Why then is the Obama camp sending out emails like this:

Krugman wrote a column yesterday about economics, religion and Obama, once again doing what he does best--tearing down Obama, who is probably going to be the eventual party nominee.

Below is my running commentary.

With the Obama campaign having raised over $40 million in the month of March, despite setbacks in Texas and Ohio, as well as the controversy surrounding remarks by Obama's former spiritual guide, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Clinton campaign strategists Mark Penn and Harold Ickes faxed to CNN their responses.

In an unprecedented move to stave off bankruptcy for one of corporate America's most favored Presidential candidates, the Federal Reserve, after a mid-morning conference call with the head of the U.S. Treasury, several of the largest Wall Street institutional investors, and an unnamed hedge fund manager, announced today that the Fed's discount window will be opened to the Clinton Campaign.  Recent rumors about the Clinton Campaign have highlighted underlying liquidity concerns, and there was concern in the financial community that this might cause her to drop out of the race.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, in a short statement released after the conference call, had this to say:  

All below the fold.

On  29 December 2007 the NY Times announced that Bill Kristol had been hired as a weekly Op-Ed columnist, beginning on 7 January 2008.   Previously he had worked as a columnist for Time magazine and was one of the leaders of Project for a New American Century, also known as PNAC.

From Wiki:

Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is an American neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., co-founded as "a non-profit educational organization" by William Kristol and Robert Kagan in early 1997. The PNAC's stated goal is "to promote American global leadership." Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world" and support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." It has exerted strong influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S President George W. Bush and strongly affected the George Bush administration's development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War.

More after the jump.

So there it is, on the front page of CNN.com, after 60+ Dkos diaries this thing has gone from story to scandal.

See me over the fold.

Pelosi strikes again.

She has reiterated what she already said about the possibility of a so-called Dream Ticket.

Quote below the fold, from CNN politics, posted: 03/13/08 03:01 PM, EDT.  

(Yeah, it is technically breaking, but come on!)

So it takes the BBC to say what needs to be said about Rezko and going negative.

See below the fold.

I have no doubts that Hillary Clinton will be good for growth, especially considering her plan for renewable energy development.

That said, there are other sectors of the economy that will also benefit from an HRC win in Denver and later in the GE.

The funeral business for example.  Just consider her record.

See below the fold.

The funeral business that is.  And this is who is trumpeting herself as the best choice to answer the Red Phone.

The International Republican Institute (IRI) and Senator McCain are irrevocably linked, as he serves on its board as one of its chairs.  Other Republican luminaries—each one a right-wing hardliner with anti-populist axes to grind—with ties to the IRI include Senator Hagel, Representative Dreier, and Representative Kolbe.  Also among those luminaries is one Brent Scowcroft, National Security Adviser to the first President Bush.  And lest we forget, the military industrial complex is represented too, by Alison Fortier of Lockheed Martin Missile Defense Programs and J. William Middledorf II, former Secretary of the Navy and ambassador to the former OAS, not to mention, of course, a little bit of the rest of corporate America—Ford, AOL Time Warner, Chevron, and Texaco—all multi-national corporations with officials or former officials serving on IRI’s board.

For those not familiar with the IRI, its self-stated mission (on its website) is as follows:  

On my local Iowa news yesterday morning there was a piece describing  how an Iowa cleaning company has yet to be paid for work done for the Clinton campaign.  The owner of the cleaning company, Rich Reese, was interviewed and said that despite emails, phone calls, and faxes he has yet to be paid for his work, which comes in at just under $8000.00.

Said Reese,  

"I thought, well you know, we'll give it a shot. I didn't think I had anything to lose. You know it's the first time somebody hasn't paid their bills."

More below the fold.

My dog, a salt and pepper schnauzer named Subcommandante Marcos, turned off the television yesterday as I was watching the Lakers game (lose Kobe, lose).  I looked at him and he said to me,
      "I have had enough.  I am putting my paw down!"
      "Don’t rant again," I said, "about people being too lazy to spay or neuter their pets.  And don’t hector me about the need for universal veterinary care or the need for an equitable distribution of dingo bones.  We already agree on those issues."
      "No, no," he said.  "What I do not get is all this nostalgia for the boom economy of the 1990’s.  Wages were stagnant until near the end of the decade, and when they did start to rise the Fed pulled in the reins."
           "What do you mean," I said.
           "Well," he said, "Consider this 1999 quote from the NY Times:

So here it is, the Clinton strategy coming out of Iowa, into NH, NV and SC, and heading into all important Super Tuesday:

"...the biggest change in Clinton-Obama contest is one of race. In December, Clinton held a 40-23 percent lead over Obama among whites, as well as support from a majority of African Americans. But now, after the issue of race exploded in the Democratic contest — with Clinton and Obama supporters sparring over comments about Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama's teenage drug use — those numbers have changed...Clinton's lead among whites has jumped, 53-24 percent, while Obama now has a 63-23 percent lead over Clinton among African Americans."