More joy abounds for the embattled Obama campaign this weekend. While many in the press continue to jab at Obama for all manner of ridiculous things - the latest being that he doesn’t consider accidental teen pregnancy a cause for celebration - critical support continues to rally to his banner. At the same time, the post-mortem of the Clinton campaign continues to compile its many ’causes of death.’ So as we wait for the next installment of Tonya Harding offensive slime to worm its way down the media-enabled IV-drip that’s keeping Clinton on life support, I thought you’d appreciate a list of the Obama boosts and Clinton bumps.

First, the bumps:

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In the process of explaining the difference between the offensive content of the Rev. Wright videos circulating and his own experience of the man, Obama put it to Elizabeth Hasselbeck of The View like this: “Imagine if somebody had compiled the five stupidest things you’ve ever said, and put them in a thirty second loop.”

The good folks at jezebel.com have taken this experiment to the next level and in the process delighted we Hasselbeck fans here at home. Here’s the video:

Five Stupidest Things Elizabeth Hassselbeck Has Said

I would encourage others to make alternate versions of the video. For, as even a casual watcher of The View, I assure you I have heard worse from her.

Mind you, the purpose would not be to condemn Hasselbeck. Hardly even to prove Obama’s point. But rather to amuse endlessly.

It’s an alarming notion to be certain that you’re being lied to, especially when it’s by the most powerful people in the world. But that is increasingly the impression one gets from the rhetoric surrounding the situation in Iraq. Consider the evidence:

The US military needs to - not just wants to, but needs to - begin bringing out troops now. Despite being locked in a bitter, tooth-to-tooth fight against al-Q in Mosul, it will be sending some units on the long cruise to Baghdad airport and ports south of Iraq by July - meaning, at a rate of a brigade a month, starting now.

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Barack Obama saw a critical ally join his ranks today as Senator Bob Casey, champion of the Pennsylvania blue-collar country, delivered his endorsement. Casey’s endorsement spoke to the vigor, unity and vision that Obama uniquely lends to the Democratic Party and to America on the whole:

Appearing on stage beside the Illinois senator, Casey told a boisterous rally, “I believe in my heart that there is one person who’s uniquely qualified to lead us in that new direction and that is Barack Obama.”

“I really believe that in a time of danger around the world and in division here at home, Barack Obama can lead us, he can heal us, he can help rebuild America,” he said.

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Nobody likes to lose their job. Especially when that job’s security is as tenuously held as by the whim of President Bush. And so when the Pentagon had to put out an assessment of the situation in Iraq, the data was presented with two very different attitudes. The public got to hear that the Surge was a rousing success that allowed Maliki to turn Basra into his personal O.K. Corral, and the President got to hear that there was no way we could draw down troops beyond the most minimal of reductions without collapse in Iraq resulting.

Granted, these are two separate topics - one a review of Maliki’s ill-timed shoot-out asserting power over the militias he doesn’t like; the other a review of Coalition troops levels’ strategic consequences. But they are interrelated. And the point at which they merge is the spirit of that most resonant question of our times: Is the Surge a success?

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As the grinder of Bosniagate continues to drag Hillary into it - a process of character dismemberment thrillingly autopsied on Cameron Fredman’s ‘Overbreadth’ - the First Lady of Fibs got a shot in the arm today by a headline announcing that half the world wants her in the White House.

Now that, at a glimpse, sounds pretty impressive. It’s the result of a global poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal, which will no doubt be participating in these kinds of lurid, inapplicable inanities more often now that the Mogul of Mendacity, Rupert Murdoch of FOX News, is at the helm. It is also an example of how deceptive headlines are.

For the real point of the article is not that half the world likes Hillary and half likes Obama - it’s which halves that matter.

When foreigners look at the three contenders, Sen. Barack Obama seems to have the lead among Europeans and Africans. Sen. Hillary Clinton is popular among Mexicans and Chinese.

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The moment that nation at large has been ignoring is drawing nigh - signs of the Petraeus strategies fractures are now showing, as violence in Iraq flares anticipating the end of the Surge. That this would happen was not, for those in the know, in doubt. The Surge’s most critical objective - the establishment of an enduring, functional government in Baghdad - wasn’t even given a ghost of an effort by the Green Zone aristocracy currently taking up space in the Iraqi parliament. Without that base of support intact, it is inevitable that the house of cards is going to fall once there aren’t enough American hands to hold it up. And, just as the strategists all feared, now that the clock has run out on the Surge, every Iraqi with a gripe is hitting the streets to ensure a hot summer comes in spring.

Now all that remains to be seen is how the different factions here in America will spin it. But before we hold our noses and check out what either side is likely to shovel onto us in the weeks to come, let’s look at the facts on the ground:

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I sometimes marvel at how unappealing a candidate for the Presidency Hillary Clinton is, as stories such as her recent thoroughly debunked claims about being in danger upon arriving in the Balkans suggest that her mendacity is only surpassed by her incompetence and sneering disregard for the public’s intelligence. Put plainly, I am even more shocked by how stupid and mean she is than how much she lies.

Case in point, this Balkans story. I’ll spin a length of this yarn for you and let you stitch it into what you will:

Clinton claimed she had some brawny, up-to-the-elbows foreign policy experience from her tenure as First Lady. The press let this one fly as long as humanly possible before someone tested whether or not it was really air tight. There - at the point when her claims are evaluated as either truth or lie - her problems began.

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Barack Obama received another major asset in his campaign for the Democratic nomination, the endorsement of Governor Bill Richardson, casting into a yet more defined light the obvious character of this race: It is over, Obama has won, his nomination is inevitable.

For the reasons that Richardson, once a contender for the nomination himself, described, the inevitability is a good thing. It means a fresh approach to politics, a purgation of the Clinton-Bush venom and a brilliant, confident, capable leader. It means that, if that phenomenal energy can be extended to the general election and Obama’s para-partisan appeal once again cultivated before it’s too late, the outcome in November is nearly assured as a victory for him. It means Democratic success.

Yet the Clinton campaign’s refusal to recognize the inevitability, or to accept it, means just the opposite. It means corroding the internal cohesion of the Democratic Party with acid infighting. It means bashing down the golden candidate of Obama until his misshapen stance no longer resembles his positive message and finds him bent far, far below McCain in the polls. It means giving the Republicans time to cohere into a mighty bloc, armed, funded and coordinated to put the candidate who, by all indications, makes Bush look like an internationalist, in office.

Perhaps most tragic, it means that Obama is demanded to depart from his politics of positivity in order to combat the relentless negativity of the Clinton campaign. He is compelled to engage Clinton and shake her from her mighty base in Pennsylvania, a powerful redoubt of her support, and to do so in a manner that does not entirely undercut his denunciation of the politics of division. In essence, it promises an ugly, clumsy chapter in what is rapidly turning from a dream for the Dems into a horror story.

The chief problem faced by the Democratic party - by the nation - is that horror stories sell big. The longer the media can write about it, the longer they will pretend that Clinton has an ice cube’s chance in Hell of winning and extend the contest into a chain of breathless moments broken by commercial breaks. She has no chance, unless the superdelegate constituency bails en masse on an African-American candidate and thereby betrays what could be regarded as the core voting bloc of the Party. All indications are trending in the opposite directions - Obama is racking more superdelegates by the day. Instead, the media would have us believe that “The Fighter,” as TIME magazine dubbed her, could somehow scrap her way up to be the Queen of the Hill. In doing so, they cheerfully gut the Democratic party - a crime the Democrats themselves are largely complicit in - with the same blithe aplomb that they led us to Iraq with.

As an astute article in Politico puts it:

Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.

One reason is fear of embarrassment. In its zeal to avoid predictive reporting of the sort that embarrassed journalists in New Hampshire, the media — including Politico — have tended to avoid zeroing in on the tough math Clinton faces.

Of all the issues the media is currently mishandling, it is this one that is most egregious and most critical. Until the media is forced to call the fight, they will perpetuate the myth of a possible Clinton victory in order to splash blood in the water so that they can rake in the ducets from the feeding frenzy.

Sadly for us, there is only one group that can effectively band together to make the press wake up and smell the inevitable: The Democrats themselves. Judging their track record on doing the same - the Gore candidacy, the Kerry candidacy, the conduct of the 2007 Congress - we have only slightly better chances of them doing the right thing than Clinton has of emerging the victory in Denver.

Videos of a pro-Clinton, anti-Obama preacher are now making the rounds - the bellowing bluster of one ‘Honorable James David Manning, PhD’ of the ATLAH church of New York. While somewhat enlightening as to the content of Kings 18, it is otherwise only educational in the sense that it disbuses the viewer of the notion that Wright is unique among pastors. But largely I post this by the request of my dear sister, who thought its content too hilarious to be kept away from my readership.

Candidly, I agree insofar that I want Pastor Manning’s opening line as my new cellphone ringtone.

Dick Cheney once again is flexing his phenomenal abilities to blow the tradition of philosophy away by proving a positive with a negative, as he today asserted that Iran is likely to be developing nuclear weapons. Cheney’s evidence? The National Intelligence Estimate that declared that they likely were not.

Speaking in Oman, a U.S.-allied Arab monarchy and neighbor of Iran’s, Cheney told ABC News, “The important thing to keep in mind is the objective that we share with many of our friends in the region, and that is that a nuclear-armed Iran would be very destabilizing for the entire area.”

“What it (the NIE) says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003. We don’t know whether or not they’ve restarted,” he said.

“What we do know is that they had then, and have now, a process by which they’re trying to enrich uranium, which is the key obstacle they’ve got to overcome in order to have a nuclear weapon,” he added. “They’ve been working at it for years.”

In sum, Cheney is reminding us that Iran has the intention of being a nuclear armed power. He just wants to make sure everybody keeps their powder dry. Surely, stirring up a proper brew of fear to inebriate world opinion and get it more compliant toward taking a hard line against Iran has nothing to do with it.

One would almost think that Cheney is ignorant of the new round of sanctions likely to pass against Iran - sanctions that are to be imposed due to increasingly stringent levels of review applied to the nation. Iran’s shady behavior in the past, such as it is, has merited thorough international attention, and that is what it’s getting. Not much of the American public is aware of this. Surely, Cheney is. Nevertheless, to hear him tell it, Oman and the Arab states good - read: stable enough due to dictatorial control of their people - enough to provide us with bases are the last line against an unfettered beast with an appetite for kilotonnage.

This may seem like not much concern now, but bear in mind the timing, as I mentioned in my prior post about Iraq: The surge is dwindling. This is fortuitous timing. For Iran, it means an opportunity to try to reassert its manipulation of Shia militia elements that it critically lost touch with during the Shia shoot-out between our pals, the Sadr militias, and the pro-Iranian Hakim clans. For the US, it means reminding the American voter who the enemy is, and getting them ready and champing at the bit in case the force needs to be racheted up.

In a classically appropriate setting, Barack Obama gave a speech urging the nation to transcend racial friction and fears and to strive for a “more perfect union.” This speech, eloquent and wise in and of itself, was both demanded and overshadowed by the controversy about comments made by Obama’s former pastor. And while I have been avoiding that particular controversy, feeling it thoroughly distasteful, Obama’s direct address of why concerns about it should be put aside deserves discussion.

Obama’s main point in his speech is that we need to allow the positives about ourselves bring us together as people, and to not let the fears about our differences drive us apart. He specifically cites his former pastor, Rev. Wright, as falling victim to the latter ill. Yet he acknowledges that the latter exists in nearly every person - he cites his generous grandmother as an example, but hopefully anyone who listens to him will be made to think of the person they know who fits that description.

I know many: The staunch supporter of Israel who advocates ethnic cleansing against the Arabs. The libertarian who believes all of the United States should effectively secede from one another and live under their individual systems of law and economy in an “European Union” structure. The agnostic who believes that freedom from religion is not sufficient - religion should be outlawed. And many more friends - all of whom have such talents, genius and generosity of spirit that I am honored to call them my friends - I know have fears illuminated by distrust or division.

And while I anticipate that any critic of Obama’s will conveniently sneer that his failure to, in his words, “disown” Rev. Wright shows insufficient distaste for the pastor’s most venomous sermons, I believe they would be hypocritical in doing so. I am certain they have some among them who think Hispanics will lead to the USA collapsing like Ancient Rome, or who think the Jews control Washington, or who use the “N word” a bit more than is appropriate. And I am sure they laugh those eccentricities off and still go about life in the American Melting Pot without seeming like David Duke or his advocate. They do this because despite the prejudices of their friends, voiced in their extreme, they act in accordance with the kind of attitude America wants to be - the kind of America Obama embodies: A post-racial and hopeful state.

That hopeful attitude should not be discouraged by Obama’s attendance of Wright’s church. If anything, it should be encouraged. Encouraged, because without the capacity to look beyond the moments of caustic division that all people are capable of, our leadership will always be divided:

It will always be a matter of letting Health Care fail because one does not want to support a bill put forward by a legislator who wants to give condoms to middle school students and convicts. It will always be a matter of letting tax reform crumble because one does not want to work with a legislator who believes schools should be able to teach Creation, not just evolution. It will be a world where the best among us is torn down because he did not condemn another’s fears, but rather strove to focus on our common hope.

Today, Hillary Clinton gave her rundown on the Iraq War, calling it a “war we cannot win.” She specifically jabbed at Obama, saying that while he had pledged to draw down troops within 16 months of assuming Presidential office, his former foreign policy advisor noted that may not be concrete. Clinton’s take on that?

“In uncertain times, we cannot afford uncertain leadership,” Clinton said.

If there is one thing certain about Clinton, it is her hypocrisy. In the very speech she rips Obama for making a pledge that his foreign policy advisor, not him, suggested might not be waterproof, she offered no solutions herself. She has pledged to nothing. The only thing certain about her leadership regarding Iraq is that correlates with opinion polls, the best explanation for her abrupt reversal in her support of it in November 2005.

Indeed, how would she get out of Iraq? Many would say that Iraq’s collapse if we withdrew immediately is a matter of “if, not when.” And yet, our withdrawal is a matter of “if, not when” as well. We cannot sustain a troop presence long enough to guarantee a low level of violence - not only because we lack the troops, but mostly because it has cost us nearly a projected $1.4 trillion for nearly no reconciliation legislation and a thoroughly dysfunctional federal government. On the other hand, without a guarantee of low levels of violence, how could we be comfortable leaving a country that could collapse into a second Iran, or become a better haven for the Saudi-backed al-Qaeda than distant Afghanistan ever was?

This much is certain: Someone will have to come up with a definite plan, and live or die by it. Obama at least has a strategy and the stones to make a pledge. His puling cohort, emboldened from her gutless kitchen sink offensive, is just picking her nose.

The results are official - Rush Limbaugh has won the Texas Democratic Party Primary Election. The final exit polls compiled today confirm that Rush’s listeners and other GOP sleaze hopped the fence in the Texas Primary to give Hillary Clinton her winning lead over Barack Obama.

GOP voters had been told by Rush and other talk show demagogues to cast a vote for Clinton so that the more beatable Hill is on the General Election battlefield, and not the unity candidate, Obama. And, dutiful to a fault, no less than 119,000 Republicans cast votes for Hillary, more than enough to provide her the 101,000 vote lead she enjoyed in the Primary Election. This campaign by Limbaugh is covered with the usual wry aplomb on Cameron Fredman’s extraordinary blog.

Fortunately for the side of integrity, not underhanded slime but elbow grease proved to be the real victorious factor in the Texas Primary as a whole, as Obama emerged with a 7 delegate lead over Clinton in that state, thanks to his 11 delegate margin of victory in the Texas caucus. So when a Primary demands dedication, organization and effort, Obama comes out on top.

Unfortunately on the whole, not many Primaries do or have, and the GOP has depended on that to give Hillary a big part of what winning edge she can manage:

For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.

Since Senator John McCain effectively sewed up the GOP nomination last month, Republicans have begun participating in Democratic primaries specifically to vote for Clinton, a tactic that some voters and local Republican activists think will help their party in November. With every delegate important in the tight Democratic race, this trend could help shape the outcome if it continues in the remaining Democratic primaries open to all voters.

Spurred by conservative talk radio, GOP voters who say they would never back Clinton in a general election are voting for her now for strategic reasons: Some want to prolong her bitter nomination battle with Barack Obama, others believe she would be easier to beat than Obama in the fall, or they simply want to register objections to Obama.

…Conservative radio giant Rush Limbaugh said on Fox News on Feb. 29 that he was urging conservatives to cross over and vote for Clinton, their bête noire nonpareil, “if they can stomach it.”

“I want our party to win. I want the Democrats to lose,” Limbaugh said. “They’re in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now. It is fascinating to watch. And it’s all going to stop if Hillary loses.”

He added, “I know it’s a difficult thing to do to vote for a Clinton, but it will sustain this soap opera, and it’s something I think we need.”

Limbaugh’s exhortations seemed to work. In Ohio and Texas on March 4, Republicans comprised 9 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, more than twice the average GOP share of the turnout in the earlier contests where exit polling was conducted. Clinton ran about even with Obama among Republicans in both states, a far more favorable showing among GOP voters than in the early races.

Meanwhile, Clinton continues to sling as much venom and barbs in Obama’s direction as she can manage, now playing the role of the grieving pot calling the kettle black as her campaign derides Obama’s for its pattern of negativity. She refuses to release her tax returns as is customary of a candidate, divulge where her record-splitting 300+ earmarks went or release the documents from the Clinton presidency. Obama’s campaign has, rightly, brought this unusual secrecy to light. The result was a dressing down from the Clinton campaign about their rival “going negative.”

When asked if the request for tax information is what they are calling personal attacks, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said: “When you accuse somebody of being disingenuous and question their integrity and their honesty, as they are doing, that constitutes a personal attack.”

It seems, by Wolfson’s logic, that personal attacks are now due. After all, it is disingeunous in and of itself to complain about the other side having a “pattern of negativity” in the same breath you announce a “kitchen sink offense” involving pitching mud at your opponent. But then, that’s just the kind of moral contortionism one could expect out of a candidate Rush Limbaugh supports.

Iraq has seen the continuation of a bloody counterstrike by al-Qaeda in recent days, one that has ended the lives of twelve Americans and numerous Iraqi civilians. While the US is quick to dismiss these as the paroxysm of a slowly dying foe, there is no doubt that they are inflicting real damage in terms of human lives and social confidence. Furthermore, the timing of the attacks is such that this enemy effort, unless rooted out soon, will coincide with the necessary drawn of our troops.

In sum: The surge is ending, the enemy knows it, and they’re surging back.

In the latest attacks in a string of violence to grip Iraq’s capital after several months of relative calm that followed a surge of U.S. forces last year, at least 20 people were killed in Baghdad in separate incidents Thursday.

A parked car bomb that exploded in a commercial district of central Baghdad killed 12 people and wounded at least 57, reports quoting Iraqi police said. The bombing took place just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the U.S. Embassy and much of the Iraqi government, the AP quoted an Iraqi police official as saying.

In other violence on Thursday, five members of an Awakening Council were killed when unidentified gunmen attacked two separate checkpoints near Tikrit, north of Baghdad. A suicide bomber also attacked an Awakening Council gathering in the village of Zab outside Kirkuk, killing three people.

These attacks are calculated to strike the spine of recent American successes - the connection between American military will and the indolent, pathetic Iraqi government: The Sunni uprising, also known as the Awakening Council. So long as the Council and the civilian zones of Baghdad foster the sense of security, the US military can claim it is succeeding. We can, in turn, then focus our operational attention on crushing al-Q in Mosul, rather than having to lock down the Green Zone and fend off insurgents of every nationalist stripe.

But if al-Q can hit us in our “rear” - striking those nationalist insurgents so that they become disillusioned with working alongside Americans and hitting Baghdad - they may get our attention to shift from weeding out their supply and support in Mosul and other remote locales. The chances they can accomplish this increase substantially when our draw down is factored in. For, after all, we’re not just going to be losing troops; we’re going to be losing our focus. We will necessarily have to be distracted with redeployment, equipment checks, scheduling; all the organizational nightmares that come with moving and that are the circulatory system of any military operation.

It is therefore unmistakable that we are heading for grim times. We are at our weakest, and the enemy knows it. They will throw whatever they can into the fray to prove it.

What remains to be seen is if that weakness, when tested, is enough of a flaw to bring the entire house of cards that is “security” in factious Iraq crashing down.