Pick me, pick me, pick me!!!

So Edwards has decided to call it quits. He now moves into the official roll of king-maker.

While he supposedly will not do so at his speech this afternoon, it is only a matter of time before he puts his endorsement on one of the remaining candidates. Such an endorsement will be huge as Clinton and Obama are very close. Which ever candidate can get the Edwards followers will take a lead that will be hard to overcome.

There are two questions. Who will Edwards endorse and when will he do so?

Given that he ran his campaign as the non-establishment candidate with a vision of change, it would be logical that he would endorse Barack Obama. However, nothing is certain in the political world and he may go with Clinton with the belief that she has the best chance to win in November.

If he were to endorse Obama, then it is critical that he do it before the end of this week. That needs to be the headline over the weekend leading into Super Tuesday. The word must get out before the country votes. If he endorses Clinton, then it does not matter as much because she already has a lead in many key states and his endorsement would not be as critical.

There is always the possibility that he strikes up a deal with Obama or Clinton to be their running mate if he endorses them and they get the nomination. I find it unlikely that he would be the VP candidate again, but it would be an interesting play on his part considering he does not have to endorse anyone and the threat of endorsing the other candidate might be too much.

He may have dropped out, but he has a very interesting role to play in this campaign.

Have terrorists infiltrated the government?

The Oxford dictionary defines terrorism as the following.

The calculated use of violence or threat of violence to inculcate fear. Terrorism is intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

So terrorism is causing fear so that you can achieve a political end. Obviously bombing a crowded market or a bus or hijacking a plane would fall into this category. But I offer this.

If you tell someone that they should be afraid and that their risk of danger is increased unless you vote for them or their party, is that not the same thing? Are you not instilling fear to achieve a political end?

Isn't telling the population that terrorists are coming and we need to be afraid playing exactly into the hands of what terrorism is all about? The terrorists want us to be afraid. If we admit that we are, then they have won.

I am not saying that anyone in the government is planning to bomb a market or hijack an airplane. I am just saying that the tactics used by the President and some members of Congress to scare up votes sure seem to be playing on the same emotions that the terrorists are aiming for.

By doing so, they are admitting that the terrorists have won and using the same tactics as those they say they will protect you from.

Did Rudy even run a campaign?

I had not been terribly interested in the Republican side of the primaries, but I am perplexed by the situation with Rudy Guliani.

While Romney and McCain were fighting over New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina, word was that Guliani was skipping all the preliminaries and focusing on Florida and Super Tuesday. Yet, when Florida rolled around he finished fourth and promptly went home. Other than the debates, it was like he wasn't even in this race.

Either he has the worst campaign strategist ever or he just thought people would just rise up and carry him into the Oval Office based only on his name. While he did clean up New York city, his whole campaing was based on the fact that he happened to be the Mayor of New York City on 9/11. He subscribed to the same fear-mongering that Bush does and that was really all he had.

I am not surprised that he dropped out. I am just surprised that he bothered to run.

If I look away it is like she isn't even there

So Hillary came over to shake hands with Ted Kennedy and/or Barack Obama after the State of the Union address. As Ted reached out and shook hands, Barack kept clapping and turned away almost refusing to make eye contact.

Here is a woman who just spent two weeks bad mouthing Obama and dragging his name through the mud simply to try to win a state that her husband later said was not very important. And this snub is surprising why? I am sure she went home afterwards and had a good cry for being neglected.

Who am I kidding? She only cries when the cameras are rolling and there are a few votes on the line.

I am much more concerned about who Barack did shake hands with. One George W. Bush shook his hand and they even exchanged some words after the speech.

That has bad juju written all over it.

Another 2 for 1 sale

When Bill ran he joked that, if elected, we would get two for the price of one. He was referring, of course, to he loud-mouthed, opinionated wife.

I seem to recall an awful lot of Who Elected Her bumper-stickers shortly after the election was over.

We now have the reverse. Hillary running and Bill voicing his opinions and making quite a ruckus. Whenever Bill makes a controversial statement, Hillary plays all sweet and remarks that Bill is just being Bill.

I see two possibilities here, neither of which I particularly like.

1) Bill is a rogue element in her campaign that she cannot control. If that is the case, what will happen if she is elected. Will Bill get a desk in the Oval Office? If she cannot control her husband, then how can she run the country?

2) Bill is doing exactly what her campaign is asking him to do. In this case Hillary is just a slimy politician and is doing exactly the kind of thing that Obama wants to get rid of when he talks about change.

If you thought Bush was Cheney's puppet, imagine the Hillary and Bill show part II.

Tell the Republicans I found their playbook?

As a registered democrat it pains me to see all of the negative campaigning coming from the Clinton camp. When it comes down to it, we are all on the same team and it just makes Democrats look bad at this stage. Save it for the Republicans.

No doubt Obama has thrown a few shots back, but it sure seems to me that he is doing so more out of defense for what is being thrown his way. Until Hillary lost Iowa it was a fairly clean campaign and despite being an Obama supporter, I would have been happy for Hillary to win. But her campaign has sunk to the lowest levels of late and it is exactly what I do not like in Washington.

She likes to question Obama's relationship with a shady land owner. That is fine. But if we want to talk shady land deals, can anyone say 'Whitewater'?

You can tell me that they were found to not have committed any wrong-doing. Thus far I have not seen any evidence that Obama did anything wrong with his client either, so why bring it up?

That is called mud-slinging. Make the opponent look bad to take the focus off your own indiscretions and poor judgment. Then criticize the opponent as being political when they try to set the record straight.

Hmm. This sounds familiar.

What is her experience exactly?

Super Tuesday is nearly upon us. Clinton just picked up another victory in a state where she was the only one to campaign. Interesting that the only two states that she has handily beat Obama are the two states that he did not campaign in.

I get so aggravated whenever someone brings up her 'experience' as a deciding factor over Obama. What experience is that? Four more years in the senate than Barack - during which time she voted to allow the President to go to war in Iraq. Is that supposed to make me feel good?

I suppose she counts her time as the First Lady of Arkansas and the United States. I think Chris Rock put it best when describing that. Who would you rather have flying the plane, the pilot or the pilot's wife?

She criticizes Obama for lack of experience and how he voted 'present' while in the state senate on a number of issues. I ask you this. During her extensive experience as the First Lady, how exactly was she held accountable? Can someone point me to some of her tough policy decisions she had to make. She never had to put her name to a vote on anything and never had any more pull than a common citizen to get anything accomplished. While Obama was a state senator in Illinois making tough decisions for his state, Hillary was dressing pretty and putting on a good face for the country. I do not think the latter trumps the former.

And let's not forget that no one heard of Hillary Clinton until Bill ran for President. And I seem to recall a fair number of people being quite upset whenever she got involved in the political game. She would have never been senator of New York had Bill not been President. She would certainly not be in a position to run for President had Bill not been President.

I will take Obama's actual legislative experience over Hillary's imagined experience any day.