Tonight is the annual "Stateman's[sic] Dinner" in Nashville.  It is the state party's major fundraising event for upcoming state sente and house elections.  This is the 32nd annual event, and includes a new feature:  NO PRESS ALLOWED.

I have not seen this on dailykos yet, so I am posting a brief diary.

I am going to make the kind of assertion here that can not be supported by empircal evidence.  It is just a sense that I have had over the past few months.  Much of it comes from being a Clinton supporter who stuck it out on dailykos on many days when I felt disrespected and unwanted.  I was trying all the time to keep my support of my candidate positive.  I don't think I ever wrote anything negative about Barack Obama.  He is a great candidate, who appears to have wrapped up the nomination, and he will have my enthusiastic support in the general election.  

Every day it gets more ridiculous, and now even the front page has lost all reason.

I was riding into work this morning and I heard on NPR a review of Hillary Clinton's interview on Bill O'Reilly.  I don't want to argue about whether she should have gone on his show.  I didn't like that decision.  But, I laughed out loud when I heard her say:

"Rich people, God bless us."

Yes, Wolfson is a goof-ball for trying to say that she really said "God blessed us."  He doesn't understand what she was saying.  But neither does kos

Stay with me while I explain.

According to observers far and wide, including may on this site, the continuation of the contest for the Democratic nomination is a pending disaster for the party.  I have been hearing this for at least a month now.  Apparently sometime in early to mid-March is the drop-dead date for picking a nominee.  

In the many discussions of the David Schuster ""being pimped out" comment about Chelsea Clinton, I have been surprised by many of the comments and diaries defending Schuster and minimizing the effects of what he said.

Last week Devilstower wrote about an upcoming meeting in Atlanta of a variety of groups of Baptists called the New Baptist Covenant.

This poll came out a few days ago, and I saw no diary on it.  The poll was commissioned by WSMV, the Nashville NBC affiliate.  It uses 1003 likely voters.

The poll was taken on January 19-21, and was released on January 24.  Here is the quick snapshot on "How would you vote if the elections was held today.

Clinton    34%
Obama      20%
Edwards    16%
Undecided  28%

Thompson 25%
Huckabee 24%
McCain   12%
Romney    7%
Undecided 26%

When the Packers-Giants game broke for halftime, the first commercial was an Obama ad.  I am in Nashville, wondering if that commercial ran in a national slot or a local slot.  Who else saw it?

It was a very good commercial.  I am a Hillary supporter right now, but have liked all of the Deocratic candidates all along.  The commercial focused on his push for ethics reform in the Senate and not taking lobbyist money.

Sorry for the short diary, but I saw no recent open thread.

Fred Thompson has claimed an endorsement from a group representing "forty million conservative Methodists across the U. S."  

If you get the chance to go hear Ms. Plame tell her story, don't miss it.  Even though I knew most of the story, it was still a great evening, and she is an American hero who desrves our support.  Anyone who listens to her recount her career in person will know that all of the attacks against her are nonsense.  Whe is brilliant, articulate, and charming.  She understands the isues surrounding the run-up to the Iraq war better than anybody I have heard talk about them.  She understands how the CIA works and how it relates to other parts of the government and can offer a unique perspective on the intelligence related to the selling of the war.

There are plenty of issues about which we can all disagree with Hillary Clinton.  If she wins the Democratic nomination and the presidency, we will all need to be even more diligent about engaging her on the issues that matter to us.  Still, the opposition to her candidacy in places, including this website, seems more venomous than any issue dispute.  I am a firm believer that the foundational stories of our culture shape the way we think and make decisions. I will readily admit that I have a vested interest in this being true because interpreting these stories is my business.  So, if you will allow, I would like to play around a little bit with three archetypal female images and see what they may have to say about people’s reactions to Senator Clinton.

Bob Allen of ethicsdaily.com has the latest rundown of Huckabee endorsements:

Movie Star, Motivational Speaker, Pro Wrestler All Endorse Huckabee as Best Conservative Christian Candidate

With all of the deserved attention being given to David Brooks's idiotic Reagan revisionism, it might be easy to miss his piece today on John McCain.

About six months ago, I was having lunch with a political consultant and we were having a smart-alecky conversation about the presidential race. All of sudden, my friend interrupted the flow of gossip and said: "You know, there’s really only one great man running for president this year, and that’s McCain."

The comment cut through the way we pundits normally talk about presidential candidates. We tend to view them like products and base our verdicts on their market share at the moment. We don’t so much evaluate their character;

In an editorial now available on Washingtonpost.com, Robert Parham, Director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, points out that Al Gore is the third Baptist from the American South to win the Nobel Peace Prize in its 107-year history.

Aidsand Wright-Riggins has a column today on ethicsdaily.com about African-Americans and prison.  It opens with this painful anecedote:

During a recent morning's conversation at my local barber shop, I discovered that of the 12 African-American men present, only two of us had never been to jail or were not currently on parole or probation.  I realized that I personally know more young African-American men who have been imprisoned than those who are members of college fraternities. An entire lucrative industry has grown up around the incarceration of African American men.

Here are comments by General Peter Pace today.  Pace was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time of the Iraq invation.

The Baptist Center for Ethics is releasing a new, 36-minute DVD called "Golden Rule Politics:  Reclaiming the Rightful Role of Faith in Politics."