In the Democratic Party’s race for the presidential nominee the primaries don’t really matter anymore. More important are the 260-plus superdelegates who are yet undecided are not bound by the outcome of any state’s vote. It would seem that the rat-race was all for nil. In hindsight the headaches could have been avoided and just let the superdelegates decide the nominee at the Denver Convention this summer. That may be exactly what happens but Barack Obama doesn’t want it that way. He wants to know as soon as possible who the nominee would be, and for good reason. John McCain has ...

The Rev. John Hagee, a controversial religious figure from whom John McCain aggressively sought an endorsement, has again shifted his story about God sending Hurricane Katrina to destroy New Orleans because a gay pride event was planned there. Hagee's original... ...

• Dick Morris of Fox”News” who used the Manchurian candidate reference.
• Mark Penn, former Hillary Clinton chief strategist, couldn’t remember that Democrats don’t have winner take all primaries.
• Cindy McCain for telling a reporter and/or truly believing that John McCain doesn’t believe in negative campaigning.

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John McCain’s campaign is accusing Barack Obama’s campaign of making an issue of Senator McCain’s age. Obama accuses McCain of ‘losing his bearings’ John McCain NEW YORK (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Thursday that Republican John McCain was “losing his bearings” for repeatedly suggesting the Islamic terrorist group Hamas preferred Obama for president. That brought an angry response from McCain’s campaign, which accused Obama of trying to make an issue of McCain’s age. Age is a touchy subject for McCain, who turns 72 in August and would be the oldest person to be sworn in as president if elected. The two ...

Great Show.  Sorry I’m so late posting and it is out of order.  :-(  I cover this week’s good and bad news.  Paul Waldman from Media Matters joins me.  We discuss his new book - Free Ride:  John McCain and the Media. ...

I haven’t yet commented on the outcome of yesterday’s primaries. I will do so now. Short of yodeling, I’ve been doing my best Switzerland impersonation since my first pick as a candidate dropped out. During the primaries, I wanted to vote my hopes, knowing that in the general I’d settle for what I could get in the Democratic nominee. (Let’s face it. My values would never let me vote for a John McCain) Well, it’s pretty clear now what we’re going to get in a Democratic nominee, and I agree it’s time to move on. This has been a ...

Surely all y’all stayed up to watch the election returns last night/this morning, no?  Not to toot my own horn or anything, but it was a split decision between Obama and Clinton.  I’m somewhat mildly surprised (happily) that Obama nearly pulled off the big upset in IN.  I would never go so far as to call Clinton out, but she’s certainly down, and it looks like the money will not flow and she’ll be sucking fumes from her campaign plane to wheel into West Virginia and...and, where else?  Something tells me that Oregon will not be amongst the campaign ...

John McCain’s right-wing wooing antics aren’t working. A shocking amount of Indiana and North Carolina Republicans put their weight against the presumptive nominee, giving their support to fallen candidates like Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul or, of course, simply voting “no.” Twenty-six percent of North Carolinians rejected the politico, while twenty-two of Indiana’s Hoosiers have apparently given up on the Senator from Arizona. ...

Things are progressing pretty much as expected in the Indiana and North Carolina Democratic presidential primaries this evening. There are 72 pledged delegates at stake in Indiana and 115 in North Carolina. The networks have already called North Carolina for Barack Obama. With 4% of the precincts reporting, he is leading Hillary Clinton 64% to 34%. No winner has yet been projected in Indiana. 37% of the precincts have reported. Mrs. Clinton is currently leading with 56% to Mr. Obama’s 44%. Thus far, the voting pattern seems to be following what we have seen in most of the rest of the nation. ...

With Indiana and North Carolina, the largest cache of delegates before the convention in Denver, finished their voting process.  What have we learned?  Nothing.  Nothing will be decided.  Both candidates will have more votes and more delegates.  Neither will drop out of the race.  And so it goes. I have been trying to look for a silver lining in all of this.  Because everytime a candidate blows his or her nose, it is reported as news.  The real crime is that we have had enough time for the news to completely cover each candidate’s position on real issues but they haven’t.  ...

A few weeks ago, I was going to do a little blog recap from yet another Obama/Clinton primary battle but I bored myself before I even started writing the post.See, I was really into the primaries during the weeks leading up to Super Tuesday. Now, not so much. It's not that I'm not interested in the outcome, I'm just over it the politics. Lest anyone chalk this up to alleged Generation X (or am I Gen Y?) "political apathy," let me be clear. I am disgusted and annoyed by political campaigns. And frankly, as someone who leans toward the progressive ...

John McCain’s Republican chops come under fire again this morning. From Arianna Huffington: At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. “I didn’t vote for George Bush” the man confessed. “I didn’t either,” his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband). The McCain campaign denies the tale, saying people should “consider the source.” Huffington responded with a list of McCain’s very public ...

Remember the gas wars? For you young-uns, that was when competing gas stations would lower their prices to entice you to purchase their gasoline rather than their competitor’s. Ah, the good old days. It seems was have a gas war of sorts going on in Indiana and North Carolina tonight. Those two states hold their presidential primaries tomorrow and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are arguing over Mrs. Clinton’s (and John McCain’s) silly plan to suspend the federal gasoline tax for three months. (It will never happen, and wouldn’t really help anyone if it did, but it makes for good ...

HEAD OVER HILLS: Belinda Carlisle's gay son lets it be known who his mother is supporting for president. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BARACK: Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away... CHRISTIAN SIRIANO: Behind-the-scenes of last week's Ugly Betty appearance. OIL: John McCain reveals the real reason for the war in Iraq. More here. Check out our previous guides to the Tube here. ...

Another day and another "clarification" from McCain and this one is a beauty. At the same time the price of crude oil breaks a world record at $120 a barrel, Sen. John McCain emphatically tries to walkback on his weekend... ...

The McCain campaign is running a new ad in Ohio about health care. At the very beginning of the ad, as John McCain intones “I’m John McCain and I approved this message,” this is what you see… I guess they couldn’t wait until November. Or perhaps they just decided they’d give the old man a glimpse of what it would look like. Whatever… just a bit premature (and extremely optimistic). (You may click on the image to view the ad.) Can you not imagine the screams of indignation coming from the right had Barack Obama dared to pull such a stunt? ...

Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow discuss John McCain’s comments from a recent townhall meeting. John McCain was talking about his new energy plan and he said, “That will then prevent us from having ever to send our men and women in conflict again in the Middle East.” Wow! Where’s Reverend Jeremiah Wright to cover this up? ...

John McCain-backing pastor John Hagee may have “retracted” his “gays caused Katrina” comments, but he’s got a whole slew of other offensibles. Here are two of our favorites from a totally frightful top ten: “The military will have difficultly recruiting healthy and strong heterosexuals for combat purposes. Why? Fighting in combat with a man in your fox hole that has AIDS or is HIV positive is double jeopardy.” … “It is impossible to call yourself a Christian and defend homosexuality. There is no justification or acceptance of homosexuality…. Homosexuality means the death of society because homosexuals can recruit, but they ...

File 'Candidate-John-McCain-Gay-Lesbian-Bisexual-Transgender-Equality-Quotes-Positions.jpg' Uploaded by eQualityGiving ...

To review: The problem with the way the Internal Revenue Code treats employer-provided health care benefits to employees is not that employers can deduct such benefits (most notably insurance premiums), thereby providing them tax-free (or at least tax-advantaged) to employees. The problem is that only employers can deduct the cost of such benefits (i.e., if the employer were to substitute more wage for less benefit, then the employee would be worse off net of taxes). The problem is not one of magnitude, but one of neutrality. An expense -- such as health insurance premiums -- either should or should not ...