So in case any folks are curious about Larry Sinclair's "press conference" at the ever honorable National Press Conference, it just finished about 10 minutes ago.

Mitch and Nan have the lowdown:

According to our reporter: No police showed up.

Most people there were young foreigners.

Mostly young bloggers.

Nothing was credulous.

No proof was offered.

Medical records would go on his website but you would have to pay for it.

No driver mentioned.

No "proof" whatsoever.

Asked OBAMA campaign to release phone records.

No security people were there at all.

Only questions were lame....why should we believe you, etc.

Our guy claims it to be the most anti-climatic, unbelievable thing he has ever seen.  Says it was really a bunch of crap.

When asked about his new CORROBORATING evidence, Larry said it was "forthcoming".  

NO MAINSTREAM MEDIA THERE AT ALL!

So yeah...more or less what you would have expected!

More, over the fold.

I was just surfing through Google news and I came across this item.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton will be in Miami this weekend to address the 76th annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
The meeting will be held June 20-23.
...
Obama is to speak on Saturday and Clinton on Sunday.

So they are speaking on different days, and a conference of mayors seems   an unlikely place to give a rousing endorsement. But the optics of it are striking; they will both be in a major battleground state at the same time. Obama is likely to hold a rally at some point while in Florida so...could it be?

I think a full-throated endorsement from Bill Clinton is JUST what we need to help Obama consolidate the party. I will keep my fingers crossed that it happens this weekend.

I wandered over to Hillaryis44 just now to find that the few dead-enders that are left, now have a new hope....

Barack Obama isn't a citizen so he can't run for president!!

Not even joking.

I had read somewhere a site called something like "freedom fighters"????

at any rate, it had a entire outline on obama and it stated that OBama was born in Africa because africa/kenya would not allow his mother to fly out of the country being as pregnant as she was, so immediately after he was born she got on the first flight to america and then filed his birth certificate once she was here

so that would mean his birth records are false and he would not be eligible for president.

Baloney. Barack was born at the Kapiolani Medical Center in Honolulu.

They also claim that he "cannot find" his birth certificate which is also baloney.

   #  confloyd Says:

   June 10th, 2008 at 4:09 pm

   Wouldn’t that be a disaster for Dean, Pelosi and Donna if afterall the money, the smear campaign on Hillary that it turned out that Obama could not be eligible to be POTUS.

The STOOPID...it burns!

OK, this is pretty high on the adorable scale, although I couldn't find any pictures of Sasha and Malia.

Barack spent what is likely to be one of his last days of rest...taking a bike ride with his girls! He is kicking off his big economic tour tomorrow in North Carolina, so he probably won't see his family for a while. Anyway, this is so sweet.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., goes for a bike ride in Chicago, Sunday, June 8, 2008.

Obama, who last week claimed the Democratic presidential nomination, capped his victory with a quiet, long weekend at home in Chicago.

The Illinois senator and his wife, Michelle, rode to a neighbor's house with their daughters, Malia and Sasha, on Sunday and the group then headed out for the ride along the scenic lake shore. But the outing was cut short by a downpour.

Check out the article for more pictures.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer as well as Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have agreed to all endorse the winner of Montana’s primary — almost certain to be Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) — immediately upon the contest being called. The trio will be joined in the endorsement by state party chairman Dennis McDonald and vice chairman Margaret Campbell.

Via, The Washington Post, five Montana superdelegates will be endorsing the winner (which will be Obama) immediately after the polls close. We can also expect the endorsement of John Sprat of South Carolina, who pre-announced yesterday.

So including these, Barack needs just 16 more Superdelegates.

Via Ben Smith

Members of Hillary Clinton's advance staff received calls and emails this evening from headquarters summoning them to New York City Tuesday night, and telling them their roles on the campaign are ending, two Clinton staffers tell my colleague Amie Parnes.

The advance staffers -- most of them now in Puerto Rico, South Dakota, and Montana -- are being given the options of going to New York for a final day Tuesday, or going home, the aides said. The move is a sign that the campaign is beginning to shed -- at least -- some of its staff. The advance staff is responsible for arranging the candidate's events around the country.

With the future of her campaign in doubt, Clinton hasn't announced her plans for the final election night of the primary cycle or beyond, but the aides said she would stage her election night event in New York City. Her entourage is currently expected to wake up Tuesday in New York and to arrive in Washington, D.C. Tuesday night.

This is a response to a diary from earlier today. The frustration is that Obama surrogates do not push back against Hillary's popular vote argument.

I have written several diaries trying to calculate the popular vote and I wrote this last one, to write my conclusion that Hillary will probably NOT get the popular vote out of Puerto Rico. She won't net the 120,000+ votes  that I calculated she would need to win when you include both Florida AND Michigan, while also allocating part of Uncommitted to Obama.

The thing is, Hillary had the chance to win using that metric if she netted enough from Puerto Rico.

In that situation, the WORST case scenario would be for them to have spent 6 weeks saying "Nope! If you include Michigan's Uncommitted Obama's still ahead!!!!!!!!!" This would have created a threshold that Hillary would have crossed to "gain" the popular vote. Her case would be FAR stronger.

So, if Obama surrogates debated the popular vote on the basis of, "Well when you include the caucuses and X percent of Uncommitted etc" WHEN Hillary crossed it, she could claim "Well, look. I have now passed THEIR definition of the popular vote."

The other Liveblog diary has slipped down the page.

This is for Barack's Press Conference which you can watch live from CNN.COM here.

This is actually pretty amusing, at least in the context of the drama over Mccain's health records.

Barack Obama's primary care physician of 20 years just released a letter giving Barack a clean bill of health. Since Barack is just 46 years old, and exercises regularly, that's hardly a surprise. And, as we all know he quit smoking so his health has actually improved.

Full letter below the fold!

Now that we FINALLY have a poll from Puerto Rico, I set out to answer once and for all if it was possible for Hillary to claim that she leads in the popular vote after all the states have voted.  

This is an argument that she is very, very, very serious about using. So please don't write any comments about how the popular vote is a bullshit metric and we shouldn't even be talking about it. Bill Clinton is in Puerto Rico right now explicitly saying that they want to get a lead in the popular vote out of Puerto Rico so they can steal this nomination.

So...on to the numbers:

A new poll published by the daily El Vocero in Puerto Rico, which holds its primary on Sunday, is out. For those that can’t read Spanish, here is the result:

Clinton: 51 percent
Obama: 38 percent

13 points is the exact same margin as the poll that was taken various months ago, so this is the margin we will use. The pollster also said that half of the responders weren't planning on voting at all, which jives in with what various Puerto Rican posters have said about turnout being far lower than what it would be in a local election.

There were a few diaries over this earlier.

Conservatives have been foaming at the mouth over a comment Barack made about his uncle being one of the first American soldiers to enter Auchswitz. Anyways, The Obama camp has clarified.

Earlier, the Republican National Committee pounced on Obama's improbable statement that an uncle had served in the unit that liberated Auschwitz.

In fact, campaign spokesman Bill Burton says, his great uncle was a member of the 89th Infantry Division that liberated the Ohrduf camp, part of Buchenwald and, according to the Holocaust Museum, the first concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops.

The soldier in question, Burton said, is Obama's grandmother's brother, who's still alive.

So he got the name of the camp wrong. But his uncle was part of the first American division that liberated a concentration camp. Really interesting! And it's great to know that he is still alive and watching his great-nephew become the President of the United States!

Is it just me or is today kind of a crummy day?

I don't know if it's the incomprehensible lack of superdelegates coming forward to endorse Obama (inexplicably, Hillary did manage to get one), or the destructive rhetoric that Hillary has been using to seat Michigan and Florida. It could be the reports that Bill Clinton wants her as Vice-president, or the new Quinnipiac polls that show Obama suffering from the "sore loser" vote. Or maybe I'm just bummed that Barack achieved something pretty amazing (the pledged delegate majority) and it feels like no one really noticed.

All in all, I have felt pretty glumn today. But, rather than dwell on the negative, I went about cheering myself up and found that it was surprisingly easy.

For example, did you know that Barack won Oregon by 18 points?? Sure, it was 16 by the time we all went to bed. But Portland came through in a BIG way in the middle of the night and expanded his margin to 18 points. He actually outperformed SUSA and Poblano's expectations. And he won working class whites!

(More feel-good news over the jump)

Hillary gained a net of 100,000 votes, last night, from Kentucky and Oregon. Is she, as she claims, ahead in the popular vote?

Nope. Now, we ALL know why the popular vote is a bullshit metric (this is a race for delegates, Florida would have been closer, he would have won Michigan, and etc, etc) but it's worth examining for the sake of pushing back on their spin. I looked over the various scenario on Real Clear Politics and found that he leads by anywhere from 552,000 to 70,000.

If you count the standard popular vote, Obama is ahead by 441,500. This number doesn't include some caucus states and with an estimate of those states, Barack's lead increases to 552,000.

If you throw in Michigan and Florida and DON'T count half of Uncommitted for Obama, and don't estimate caucuses...then Hillary leads by 181,000. This is the ONLY metric where she leads.

Let me repeat that so we all understand...

Hillary wants us to count Florida (even though neither campaigned there), count Michigan, (and give Barack ZERO votes), then NOT count the caucus states that didn't report a popular vote. And that's how she leads.

Today Gallup has a terrific report that everyone should read on how Barack is consolidating support among Democrats. He has broadened his own support and eaten into Hillary's base (including hardworking Americans and hispanics). White women over 50 is the only group that hasn't budged...but they'll come around.

Anyway, today's poll shows him maintaining his huge lead (he's 14 points ahead) AND, more important, improving his numbers with Mccain. He now beats him by 3 points, reversing a downward spiral that lasted almost a week. Again, I am sure that bounce comes from his beginning to cosolidate the party.

Now...all I want is for Hillary to DROP OUT, and campaign for Obama vigorously. If she does this...

WE. CANNOT. LOSE.

Please forgive if this was already diaried, but I didn't see it.

I just read that Barack gained an add-on delegate from Kansas. They held their state convention today and Mark Parkinson (the Lt. Governor who endorsed Obama way back in February) was chosen as the delegate.

Along with the superdelegate that endorsed earlier AND the Nevada delegate that we were lucky to gain, that makes today's haul +3 for Obama and -1 for Hillary. He's now just 16 delegates away from a majority!

(Note that Bill Clinton was AT the Nevada convention...and they still lost a delegate)

I just did the math projecting Obama's delegate count on May 20th, the day of the Kentucky/Oregon primaries, and found that he will be...just 50 delegates away from reaching 2025.

The state of the race today is that he is 132 delegates away. Poblano has estimated that he will get a combined 46 delegates from Kentucky and Oregon which places him 86 delegates away. And, if the Obama campaign rolls out 5 Superdelegates a day, like they did yesterday, he will be 25 delegates closer and just 61 delegates away.

Finally, I expect some of Edwards' delegates to declare that they will switch to Obama. One of them already has and if 10 others follow suit...voila, he's 50 delegates away!

Using this same reasoning, Hillary is now 308 delegates away. She will (according to Poblano) gain 57 delegates in Oregon and Kentucky, reaching 251 by May 20th. If she gets her usual 1 superdelegate per day, she will be at 246. Almost 200 delegates behind and without any chance to catch up.

I just saw this incredibly annoying and irresponsible post over at Talking Points Memo that suggests that Hillary is ahead in the popular vote, if you include Florida and Michigan. This is FALSE. I looked over the various scenarios over at Real Clear Politics and Barack is ahead by anywhere from 703,832 to 210,751.

I just read the pre-West Virginia "spin" that Obama's campaign sent out to the media. This is a TERRIFIC TERRIFIC debunking of some of the ingrained myths about Barack's electability and his standing among working class, non-educated whites. I realize the purpose of this memo is clear (it's shameless spinning) and it doesn't account for Hillary running stronger in Ohio and Florida, but it's a very useful reminder of how strong of a position Barack is really in.

Some Excerpts below the fold: