KY  Clinton +134,707 OR  Clinton -59,419 Puerto Rico  Clinton +300,000 Montana Clinton +28,488 SD  Clinton +18,805

"We're not gonna do that," Plouffe said. "We have not talked about those issues in the campaign, and won't."

But they steadfastly refused to release their returns for prior years, and only later did we learn that 1978 and 1979 were the tax years when Mrs. Clinton reported her 10,000% cattle-futures trading profit.

link

I sent this correction to TPM.  Unfortunately, I did not see an update on this story.  Now, I'm not alleging bias because I think for the most part this site does a good job of cutting through spin.  However, I just wanted to set the record straight.  The Obama campaign cannot claim they have not talked about this issue.  They have. 

Please recommend this if you believe in cutting through campaign spin to get to the truth.

Oops!

Also, he doesn't want to jump on people's gaffes and beat their words to death.

Unless it's convenient in Mississippi.

And:

"Misrepresenting your position and carefully parsing your words when you don't think you'll get caught are the hallmarks of the kind of politics that Barack Obama is running to change."

Except for on NAFTA.

Here's a good write-up from Slate:

At the next train stop, I'm going to stand behind Sen. Obama when he speaks. When he's decrying the trivial distractions in politics, I think he may be crossing his fingers behind his back.

As the senator's campaign train wound from one speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics to the next speech where he denounced tit-for-tat politics, his campaign hosted a conference call to engage in the practice the candidate was busy denouncing. I suppose it would have been an even greater act of chutzpah for the Obama campaign to host the conference call while Sen. Obama was denouncing that kind of behavior, but not much more of one.

Obama campaign aides scheduled the call to talk about Hillary Clinton's fantastical story about her breakneck race to shelter under sniper fire during a visit to Bosnia. You might think this would be the last story the Obama campaign would be pushing because in Wednesday's debate, the senator mistakenly suggested his campaign had only discussed the issue because reporters had brought it up—not because they were trying to take advantage of Clinton's extended work of fiction. To push the story again now would make Obama look even more insincere about that claim.

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So the problem that we have in our politics, which is fairly
typical, is that you take one person's statement, if it's not properly
phrased, and you just beat it to death. And that's what Senator
Clinton's been doing over the last four days.
And I understand that. That's politics.

Barack Obama’s campaign has debuted a new radio ad in Mississippi called "Respect," highlighting what they call “derogatory” remarks Hillary Clinton made about the state late last year.

The ad also argues that Obama will “practice his Christian faith by respecting us” — an apparent push-back against the false Muslim rumors that have dogged him throughout the campaign.

In the 30-second spot, former Mississippi Governor Ray Mabus, an Obama supporter, derides Clinton for comments she made last fall singling out the state’s record of electing female politicians.

"I was shocked when I learned Iowa and Mississippi have never elected a woman governor, senator or member of Congress," Clinton told the Des Moines Register in October. "There has got to be something at work here. How can Iowa be ranked with Mississippi? That's not the quality. That's not the communitarianism, that's not the openness I see in Iowa.'"

Mabus accuses the Clinton campaign of calling Mississippi voters “second class.”

Starting with law school:  During her second year, she worked at the Yale Child Study Center, learning about new research on early childhood brain development and working as a research assistant on the seminal work, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973).[ She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital, and volunteered at New Haven Legal Services to provide free advice for the poor.   She began a year of post-graduate study on children and medicine at the Yale Child Study Center.Her first scholarly article, "Children Under the Law", was published in the Harvard Educational Review in late 1973.[ Discussing the new children's rights movement, it stated that "child citizens" were "powerless individuals" and argued that children should not be considered equally incompetent from birth to attaining legal age, but rather courts should presume competence except when there is evidence otherwise, on a case-by-case basis.[ The article became frequently cited in the field.   During her post-graduate study, Rodham served as staff attorney for Edelman's newly founded Children's Defense Fund in Cambridge, Massachusetts,[ and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.   Rodham maintained her interest in children's law and family policy, publishing the scholarly articles "Children's Policies: Abandonment and Neglect" in 1977 and "Children's Rights: A Legal Perspective" in 1979.   Rodham co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, a state-level alliance with the Children's Defense Fund, in 1977. In late 1977, President Jimmy Carter (for whom Rodham had done 1976 campaign coordination work in Indiana) appointed her to the board of directors of the Legal Services Corporation.   Rodham became First Lady of Arkansas in January 1979, her title for a total of twelve years (1979–1981, 1983–1992). Clinton appointed her chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee the same year, where she successfully obtained federal funds to expand medical facilities in Arkansas' poorest areas without affecting doctors' fees.   As First Lady of Arkansas, Hillary Clinton chaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee from 1982 to 1992, where she sought to bring about reform in the state's court-sanctioned public education system.  In one of the most important initiatives of the entire Clinton governorship, she fought a prolonged but ultimately successful battle against the Arkansas Education Association to put mandatory teacher testing as well as state standards for curriculum and classroom size in place.[   She introduced Arkansas' Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth in 1985, a program that helps parents work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.   Clinton served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services (1988–1992) and the Children's Defense Fund (as chair, 1986–1992).   In 1993, Bill Clinton appointed Hillary Clinton to head and be the chairwoman of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, hoping to replicate the success she had in leading the effort for Arkansas education reform. Clinton later acknowledged in her book, Living History, that her political inexperience partly contributed to the defeat, but mentioned that many other factors were also responsible.   Along with Senators Ted Kennedy and Orrin Hatch, she was a force behind passage of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997,   In 1997, she initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which she regarded as her greatest accomplishment as First Lady. In 1999, she was instrumental in passage of the Foster Care Independence Act, which doubled federal monies for teenagers aging out of foster care   She worked with Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and with other senators. And as a result, in 2005, Congress mandated a new form of military health care called TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS) which gives those in the Selected Reserve – a component of the Ready Reserve – an opportunity to purchase TRICARE health coverage when not on active duty. 

Despite disparagement from political rivals, we find she deserves ample credit for expanding children's health insurance.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who cosponsored the 1997 legislation that eventually led to the creation of SCHIP, was asked whether Clinton was exaggerating her role. The Globe said he wouldn't criticize Clinton "directly" but said: "Facts are stubborn things ... I think we ought to stay with the facts."

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Oct. 6, 2007: The children's health program wouldn't be in existence today if we didn't have Hillary pushing for it from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Washington Times, Aug. 6, 1997: The plan signed into law yesterday by Mr. Clinton and pushed by the first lady is a duplicate of the 4-year-old health care task force idea, except that it is paid for by a 15-cent tax on cigarettes.

One of the co-authors of the plan, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, credited Mrs. Clinton for her "invaluable help, both in the fashioning and the shaping of the program."

Years later, when Clinton was first running for the Senate, Kennedy's aide Littlefield was still giving her credit. The New York Times quoted him as saying, ''She was a one-woman army inside the White House to get this done.'' He said that when President Clinton himself was showing reluctance to back the new legislation out of fear it would upset a budget deal with Republicans, "We went to Mrs. Clinton and said, 'You've got to get the president to come around on this thing,' " and she did.

Speaking to reporters aboard her campaign plane Sunday morning, the Democratic presidential contender said she was eager to see "Shine a Light," the new documentary about the legendary rock band that was directed by Martin Scorsese and opens Friday.

Clinton said she attended her first Stones show as a high school senior in 1965, and has been a few times since. She praised Mick Jagger, the band's 64-year-old lead singer, and said she admired his work ethic.

"If you go to a Stones concert today and I have been, it's just amazing," Clinton said. "He has this incredible presence. He is very disciplined, he works out, and he's incredibly devoted to what he does."

Oh, Hillary.  She just wants to be our beast of burden.

In an interview, Cleaver offered a glimpse of private conversations.

He said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois had recently asked him "if it comes down to the last day and you're the only superdelegate? ... Do you want to go down in history as the one to prevent a black from winning the White House?

Jackson, an Obama supporter, confirmed the conversation.

Nutter has been called Philadelphia's Barack Obama. He is black, Ivy League-educated, popular and an agent of change -- just like Obama. But Nutter has remained steadfast in his support of Clinton -- to the surprise of many in this city.

The mayor acknowledges that some voters have approached him and asked, in his words, "Why not support a brother?"

"Somehow, someway, for some people there's an automatic assumption that a mayor who is African-American or some other elected official has to support another African-American," Nutter said.

"I thought that when Dr. King said that he wanted people to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, I thought that's what he was talking about," Nutter added.

Nutter is sticking with Clinton, even though by doing so, he said he might be thwarting the election of America's first black president.

"Certainly the opportunity to demonstrate to my 13-year-old daughter that there is a bright future for her, that a woman could get elected president of the United States, is equally compelling," he said.

"I think that we are at this historical moment," Nutter said. "Either candidate will clearly make history. But you only get to vote for one. The most important thing is winning in November, putting a Democrat in the White House."

He added, "I'm a great fan of history. I don't know that when people are struggling to pay the bills, that they ultimately conclude that, 'Well, if we can just make history with this vote, then all of my problems will be solved.' It still, for me, always comes back to performance [and] track record."

Today, the Obama campaign blamed Clinton for what Gallup called a "perceived honesty gap" and Plouffe called a "character gap."

Plouffe said Clinton is "consistently engaged in political calculation to mislead voters" and laid out a case that Clinton is a liar (though he never used the L word so forbidden in politics.)

Assailing the Clintons' refusal so far to release any recent tax returns or the names of donors to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Plouffe asked, "What are the Clintons scared of? Why won't they release this information? … What's lurking there?"

See a pattern there?

One of the character attacks from the Obama campaign that has bothered me the most so far is this one:

The campaign manager also mentioned a recent "60 Minutes" interview in which Clinton said Obama wasn't a Muslim "as far as I know."

"She has shared prayer breakfasts with Sen. Obama and knows without a shadow of a doubt that he is a Christian," Plouffe said. "These kinds of evasions and misleading of voters causes a real 'character gap.'"

I've read many posters on this blog who have taken a second look at that video and admitted they jumped the gun.  How could Clinton have known she was going to be asked the same question three times and at that point she would "hedge."  How many "no"s does one person have to say before that's accepted as her answer?  The Obama camp pushing this button is one of the shadier things I've seen them doing, but I think is consistent with their race-card playing tactics.

To read the article summarizing this in full, click here:

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4495865

Feel free to tell me how saying someone has a "character gap" is not a character attack.

"Misrepresenting your position and carefully parsing your words when you don't think you'll get caught are the hallmarks of the kind of politics that Barack Obama is running to change."

However, here is how the NAFTA story went (from Politico):

"For four days after a news report alleged that Sen. Barack Obama’s economic adviser had told Canadian officials to ignore the Democrat’s tough talk on trade deals, the campaign gave incomplete – and sometimes misleading – explanations of whether a meeting had even taken place.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Monday night that the campaign had known of the meeting between adviser Austan Goolsbee and Canada’s consul general in Chicago since a Canadian television network, CTV, first reported the interaction last Wednesday.

“When they reported it, we were aware of it at that point,” Burton said.

Burton and other campaign aides – even Obama himself – vociferously denied the substance of the report, which alleged Goolsbee had given back-channel assurances to Canada that the Illinois senator’s call for reopening labor and environmental rules in the North American Free Trade Agreement was merely political posturing.

But for days, the campaign was less-than-forthcoming on a specific detail: Had a meeting actually occurred?

“Well, the Canadian ambassador issued a statement saying that that story was absolutely false. There had been no such contact,” said Susan Rice, an Obama foreign policy adviser, on MSNBC’s “Tucker” show Thursday. “There had been no discussions on NAFTA. So we take the Canadians at their word . . . Period.”

Also Thursday, Goolsbee told ABC News that he “would not confirm or deny meetings with anyone.” Yet he hinted at an interaction, saying Canada’s consul general contacted him “at one point to say ‘hello’ because their office is around the corner.”

David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, was asked Friday by reporters to comment on the conversation reported on Canadian television.

“The story is just not true. Obama's position on this is very clear. Our campaign and the ambassador have been very clear on this; it did not happen,” Plouffe said, appearing to tailor his statement to only address elements of the initial Canadian TV story that had been discounted.

The Canadian network tweaked its initial story last week to reflect that Goolsbee had spoken with the consul general in Chicago, not the ambassador in Washington, as it was first reported. It is also appears now that the Canadian officials, not Goolsbee, initiated the contact.

Despite Obama's promises to run as a transparent and straight-talking candidate, the campaign offered muddled responses that allowed the story to metastasize in the days leading up to a primary election in Ohio, where trade issues could prove decisive."

A definite parsing of words and misrepresentation of position.  How can Obama change politics when he's running politics as usual?