Blue Crab Boulevard

Another torpedo has made a direct hit on the good(?) ship Titanic Inevitableness today when an important supporter abandoned ship. Representative John Lewis has withdrawn his support for Hillary Clinton.

MILWAUKEE — Representative John Lewis, an elder statesman from the civil rights era and one of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most prominent black supporters, said Thursday night that he planned to cast his vote as a superdelegate for Senator Barack Obama in hopes of preventing a fight at the Democratic convention.

“In recent days, there is a sense of movement and a sense of spirit,” said Mr. Lewis, a Georgia Democrat who endorsed Mrs. Clinton last fall. “Something is happening in America and people are prepared and ready to make that great leap.”

Mr. Lewis, who carries great influence among other members of Congress, disclosed his decision in an interview in which he said that as a superdelegate, he could not go against the wishes of the voters of his district, who overwhelmingly supported Mr. Obama.

“I’ve been very impressed with the campaign of Senator Obama,” Mr. Lewis said. “He’s getting better and better every single day.”

His comments came as fresh signs emerged that Mrs. Clinton’s support was beginning to erode from some other African-American lawmakers who also serve as superdelegates. Representative David Scott of Georgia, who was among the first to defect, said he, too, would not go against the will of voters in his district.

The developments came on a day in which Mrs. Clinton set out anew to prove that the fight for the Democratic nomination was far from over. Campaigning in Ohio, she pursued a new strategy of biting attack lines against Mr. Obama, while adopting a newly populist tone as she courted blue-collar voters.

There she goes, trying on hats again. This time it is the failed message of John Edwards. (There is a lot of speculation that Edwards might endorse Clinton. Could this be a sign?) I suspect the new hat won't fit any better than all the previous ones. If Clinton somehow wins in the end it will be ugly and disastrous to the Democratic party. Pass the popcorn.

By the way, the next Hillary video link someone sends you might be a Trojan: 

The spam, which has the subject line "Hillary Clinton Video!!" offers users a link promising a video of the presidential candidate giving a speech. In reality, clicking on it would cause a Trojan to be downloaded to compromise the victim's machine for the purpose of sending more spam.

Word to the wise. 

Well, for a couple of candidates who are both saying they stand for change, it looks a lot like the same, slimy way of doing business. Both Barack "Messiah" Obama and Hillary "Her Inevitableness" Clinton are supplying a lot of campaign cash to the superdelegate voters they are courting. In other words, they are cheerfully buying votes - no matter how much lipstick they put on that particular pig. Oh, and the Messiah is the biggest buyer.

WASHINGTON — Campaign committees controlled by Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have donated at least $890,000 to the campaigns of superdelegates, according to a report by a group that tracks money in politics.

Obama donated the largest amount, about $694,000, to those campaigns in the past three years, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Clinton donated $195,500.

Both campaigns are furiously lobbying for support among the Democratic Party’s nearly 800 superdelegates, who will be free to support whomever they choose at the convention, regardless of the outcome of the primaries. Superdelegates include all Democratic members of Congress, Democratic governors and other party officials.

If the candidates continue to split delegates in the primaries, superdelegates could decide the nominee. It takes 2,025 delegates to win the nomination.

“People put a lot of trust in their elected officials to represent them,” said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. “It would be particularly unpalatable if money seemed to be a factor in who ultimately got the nomination.”

On Thursday, the delegate count stood at 1,276 for Obama and 1,220 for Clinton after the Democratic National Committee released an updated list of superdelegates that dropped supporters of both candidates.

Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, an Obama supporter, is no longer a superdelegate because she left her position with National Conference of Democratic Mayors. Rep. Tom Lantos of California, who died Monday, also was removed from the list. He had endorsed Clinton.

Spokesmen for Obama and Clinton said donations were not used to gain endorsements from superdelegates.

Just look at the figures. Supporters and undecided get the big bucks; superdelegates who support the opposition get short shrift. Nope, no vote buying there. Just building the party up. Sing along now: How much is that nomination in the window?

If you believe the explanations and denials from the candidates, I have some lovely real estate in Florida you'd be interested in. So much for change. 

Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post's The Fix site wonders if Hillary Clinton is going to go negative in the days leading up to her last chance, firewall votes in Texas and Ohio. In a way, he seems to be saying it has already started.

Amid all of the armchair quarterbacking that has gone on over the past eight days about what Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) should do to turn around her campaign, one solution that doesn't seem to come up much is perhaps the simplest — and most dangerous: going negative.

"Going negative is a not a bad option for Clinton," said one Democratic strategist based in Washington who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the less-than-savory topic. "Her positive message seems to have a ceiling and her contrasting message that [Sen. Barack Obama] just might not be ready enough is her strongest argument."

For the majority of this — now extended — campaign, neither Clinton nor Obama has aired a true contrast ad that mentions the other candidate by name and in a less than favorable light. A genuinely negative ad? Forget it.

The closest we've come is in the last two days as Clinton's campaign launched this spot in Wisconsin in advance of that state's Feb. 19 primary.

The ad has none of the ominous music or unflattering pictures that are standard fare in traditional negative advertising, but it does seek to make a contrast between Clinton and Obama. That contrast? That Clinton is a substantive doer while Obama is a gifted speaker light on details. The ad's narrator suggests that Obama has not agreed to a debate in Wisconsin because he'd "prefer to give speeches than have to answer questions." The ad then goes on to detail Clinton's plan to fix the economy and the health care system.

And, that, ladies and gentlemen, is what passes for a rough-and-tumble campaign ad on the Democratic side. 

But he closes with an interesting quote from a Democratic campaign operative who mentions that going negative could work for Clinton - if she goes at it in a Mac versus PC ad sort of way. Massive negative attacks that make a person laugh or feel good about them. That may, in fact, be what the campaign ad Cillizza mentions was an attempt at.

Although I have cheerfully been reporting the self-inflicted damage the Clinton campaign has sustained, I have also pointed out, repeatedly, that it is not wise to count the Clintons out. The red-faced, angry, attack Bubba did not work out at all, so why wouldn't they try sugar coating their venomous ambition?

Republican strategists take note and be ready. Because the other thing the Clintons are known for is that if a tactic worked once, they'll keep using it. So if Clinton can get Baron Samedi to reanimate her campaign by this sort of method, she will most certainly use it in the general election. 

You've all seen the road signs that read"Blind Drive." Now, I've often thought that those signs were particularly true in some areas where I have lived, because it sure seems that way when you see some of the antics pulled out on the highways. But in Italy, the blind literally do drive. Or at least one man who claimed to be blind for 40 years in order to claim pension benefits.

ROME (AFP) - A 70 year-old Italian man who had been pretending to be blind for 40 years to get an invalid's pension was arrested as he drove his car, Sky TG24 television said Thursday.

The "particularly nervous" man was stopped during a routine road check in the northern city of Spezia and could not provide a driving licence, city police chief Massimo Giaramita said.

"Then we checked his medical record and were amazed to find that he was registered as 100 percent blind," Giaramita said.

What a dunce. All he had to do was bring a dog with him and say the pooch was his seeing eye driving dog. 

Mitt Romney is expected to endorse John McCain today and will ask his delegates to also back the Arizona Senator.

CNN's Dana Bash reports that former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney will endorse senator John McCain. The endorsement is expected to happen at a Boston event at 3:30 p.m. ET today.

Two sources familiar with the decision confirmed the news, and said Romney now wants the delegates he won during his campaign to back his former rival.

The Associated Press is reporting that the US is planning to shoot down the broken satellite that is expected to fall to earth sometime in March. The plan calls for a specially modified missile to be fired from a Navy cruiser. 

U.S. officials said Thursday that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options will not be publicly discussed until a later Pentagon briefing.

The disabled satellite is expected to hit the Earth the first week of March. Officials said the Navy would likely shoot it down before then, using a special missile modified for the task. Other details about the missile and the targeting were not immediately available.

But the decision involves several U.S. agencies, including the National Security Agency, the Department of Homeland Defense and the State Department. Shooting down a satellite is particularly sensitive because of the controversy surrounding China's anti-satellite test last year, when Beijing shot down one of its defunct weather satellites, drawing immediate criticism from the U.S. and other countries.

A key concern at that time was the debris created by Chinese satellite's destruction — and that will also be a focus now, as the U.S. determines exactly when and under what circumstances to shoot down its errant satellite.

The military will have to choose a time and a location that will avoid to the greatest degree any damage to other satellites in the sky.

When the existence of the failed satellite was revealed, the AP and others went on and on about how the satellite threatened the earth. Let's face it, the satellite is going to fall and if it is all in one piece when it does so, there is a real chance it could hit something. (It actually isn't all that great a chance, incidentally.) But they may have some idea when and where the satellite may hit now. They may see the shootdown as a "least worst" option, depending on where it is now predicted to hit. There also may be security concerns since about 50% of the satellite is expected to survive reentry.

The scientists managing the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter are releasing 3-D images of terrain features on Mars.

The towering 3-D features of Martian canyons and highlands are about to stand out like never before, thanks to data from a high-resolution camera on the Mars Express orbiter.

These data, collected by the camera on the European Space Agency's Mars Express, are allowing scientists to create so-called Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) to look around the Martian surface from different directions and angles, as opposed to the usual bird's-eye view from above provided by previous Mars orbiter cameras. The new data sets have now been released on the Internet, the European Space Agency announced this week.

"Understanding the topography of Mars is essential to understanding its geology," said Gerhard Neukum, HRSC lead scientist at Freie Universität (FU) in Berlin, Germany.

Creating the data for such digital models requires spacecraft to study the same Martian feature at least twice, each time from a different angle. Most previous efforts to do this have involved spacecraft making two orbital passes over features.

The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) only needs one overhead pass to capture images of a feature from three different angles — on approach, directly underneath and receding into the distance. The camera also obtains altitude measurements for its high-resolution images.

All that data is processed by the German Space Agency (DLR) and FU Berlin for several years before digital models of the Martian surface can start to emerge. Now researchers are selecting the best data to "stitch them together" and develop digital models on a "global scale," Fred Jansen, Mars Express senior manager, told SPACE.com.

They have examples of the images. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be an online, searchable viewer for these, or at least none I can find. Maybe someone will stitch one together in the future.

Wow, talk about a bleak picture. Just read how the New York Times is describing Hillary Clinton's campaign train wreck.

SAN ANTONIO — The Texas and Ohio presidential primaries, on March 4, have become must-win contests for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, her advisers say. So why is she just opening campaign field offices across those states?

 The primary in Pennsylvania, on April 22, is also a crucial battleground. So why is her campaign telling its most prominent supporter there, Gov. Edward G. Rendell, that there is not enough money now for his proposed piece of direct mail to voters?

And the Maine caucuses on Sunday were the one recent contest that Mrs. Clinton had hoped to win. So why did the campaign of her rival, Senator Barack Obama, have better political and Internet operations to energize its supporters there? (Mr. Obama won Maine.)

The answers go to the heart of Mrs. Clinton’s current political challenge. She and her team showered so much money, attention and other resources on Iowa, New Hampshire and some of the 22-state nominating contests on Feb. 5 that they have been caught flat-footed — or worse — in the critical contests that followed, her political advisers said.

She also made a strategic decision to skip several small states holding caucuses, states where Mr. Obama scored big victories, accumulating delegates and, possibly, momentum.

Her heavy spending and relatively modest fund-raising in January compounded the problems, leaving the campaign ill-equipped to plan after Feb. 5, advisers and donors say.

“It sure didn’t look like they had a game plan after Super Tuesday,” Mr. Rendell said in an interview on Wednesday. “What I would have done, knowing the line-up, I would’ve picked one or two states to make an all-out effort, whether Maine or Washington State or you name it, to really try to stop the Obama momentum.”

The Times reports that donations have recently increased, but it sure looks like desperation. Clinton is begging for volunteers to come help her. But the campaign isn't offering to help pay for the volunteer's expenses, either. This is a portrait of a rapidly sinking campaign. The Titanic Inevitableness hit an iceberg named Obama somewhere along the way and it shows. But I also do not believe Hillary Clinton will abandon ship and will continue to fight - in an increasingly ugly manner - all the way through to the convention. It's possible that a mass defection by superdelegates could force her out, but I can't see that happening just yet. 

Also keep in mind that John McCain's campaign was widely predicted to be dead not so very long ago. So things could change. But this certainly looks very bad and Clinton does not have the one thing McCain had to make a turnaround happen: time. 

National Review has published an editorial calling for conservatives and Republicans to pull themselves together instead of fragmenting over John McCain. THe various contributers to NRO and The Corner have certainly been going at each other over McCain for some time now, so the editorial is significant. 

The percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republicans has plummeted. Young people voted for John Kerry and have not become more conservative since 2004. Democrats think they just might get a filibuster-proof Senate capable of enacting national health care and confirming liberal justices to the Supreme Court in 2009. So many conservatives have decided that now is a good time to turn on each other in a fight as bitter as it is counterproductive.

Partisans of John McCain say his conservative critics are “deranged.” They say those critics are merely trying to get attention for themselves. The talk-show hosts who dislike McCain, they say, are irrelevant — when they are not saying those hosts will cost Republicans the election and thus endanger the national defense.

The critics, meanwhile, say McCain’s nomination will ruin the party. They say he is not a conservative — and some of them go so far as to argue that neither is anyone who supports him.

Enough. It is not “deranged” to have concerns about McCain’s positions and his political style. Nor is it a betrayal of conservative principles to support him, especially now that he is the all-but-certain Republican nominee. Conservatives can reach differing views of McCain in good faith. Each camp needs to accept that truth.

Please read the entire editorial. My own position is well known. I have serious misgivings with John McCain on a number of issues. But in the big picture it not better to quit the game over those differences. I know that I have commenters who disagree with me, others who hold positions close to mine. We can agree to disagree over a lot of things.

What we cannot do is walk away and let someone who will be infinitely worse for this nation take the White House by default. For all the mythology that has developed around Ronald Reagan through the years, the fact is that he was willing to - and actually did - compromise on many conservative issues. The hard line conservatives did not get their way in all matters when Reagan was in office - but many of them still were able to influence what compromises were made. I think it is a lesson we should not forget, folks.

There you go, fire away. 

There is an interesting take on Barack Obama and the message he is delivering from Daniel Henninger today. Henninger points out that Obama is a marvelous speaker with fabulous delivery - but that the message he is delivering is uniformly bleak.

Is Sen. Obama peaking? Probably not. The across-the-board growth in his Potomac numbers was impressive. The more appropriate question would be, is the Obama wave cresting?

Barack Obama has ridden these primaries like a skilled surfer, catching big emotional waves and riding them spectacularly, letting this new force carry him forward. Even the biggest waves, however, eventually break on the shore.

The conventional critique of Sen. Obama has held that his pitch is perfect but at some point he'll need to make the appeal more concrete.

I think the potential vulnerability runs deeper. Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar. It's a downer.

Up to now, the force of Sen. Obama's physical presentation has so dazzled audiences that it has been hard to focus on precisely what he is saying. "Yes, we can! Yes, we can!" Can what?

Listen closely to that Tuesday night Wisconsin speech. Unhinge yourself from the mesmerizing voice. What one hears is a message that is largely negative, illustrated with anecdotes of unremitting bleakness. Heavy with class warfare, it is a speech that could have been delivered by a Democrat in 1968, or even 1928.

Here is the edited version, stripped of the flying surfboard:

"Our road will not be easy . . . the cynics. . . where lobbyists write check after check and Exxon turns record profits . . . That's what happens when lobbyists set the agenda. . . It's a game where trade deals like Nafta ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart . . . It's a game . . . CEO bonuses . . . while another mother goes without health care for her sick child . . . We can't keep driving a wider and wider gap between the few who are rich and the rest who struggle to keep pace . . . even if they're not rich . . ."

Here's his America: "lies awake at night wondering how he's going to pay the bills . . . she works the night shift after a full day of college and still can't afford health care for a sister who's ill . . . the senior I met who lost his pension when the company he gave his life to went bankrupt . . . the teacher who works at Dunkin' Donuts after school just to make ends meet . . . I was not born into money or status . . . I've fought to bring jobs to the jobless in the shadow of a shuttered steel plant . . . to make sure people weren't denied their rights because of what they looked like or where they came from . . . Now we carry our message to farms and factories."

It ends: "We can cast off our doubts and fears and cynicism because our dream will not be deferred; our future will not be denied; and our time for change has come."

I am not saying all of this is false. But it is a depressing message to ride all the way to the White House.

A glossy coat of rhetorical "hope" slathered on a bleak, depressing message could, indeed, become a problem. Henninger contrasts Obama's speech with the one John McCain gave. I'll send you over there to read the whole thing, it's worth it. Primaries are always about motivating the base, the general election is where the real policy difeerences will have to start coming out.