EVENING UPDATE,  MARCH 4,  2008

If the election news warrants, and it probably will, there'll be some extensions to Evening Update later tonight. 

HILLARY DEFIANT

It can be safely said that Hillary Clinton is in a fighting mood.  Look, that's like saying that Abraham Lincoln is deceased or that CNN is liberal.  Certain things are assumed to be true, or true most of the time.  But Ms. Hillary seems to have found her best fighting stance, and she's using it.  The New York Times reports:

As voters in Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont and Texas headed to the polls potentially to decide the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday urged voters to settle in for a nomination fight that could roll on for months to come.

“You know this is a long process,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters Tuesday morning outside a polling place in Houston.

It was an entirely different message from the one delivered by former President Bill Clinton just a few weeks ago, when he told Ohio and Texas voters that his wife would not succeed without victories in those delegate-rich states.

Lesson:  Bill Clinton serves his wife best when he's in Thailand, or even further.

Hillary's whole tone in the last three days has been defiance, with some national-security talk thrown in.  It may have worked.  Late polls show her inching up in Texas, possibly into a narrow lead.  But we are talking small differences, and it's getting out the vote that will now make the difference. 

A COMEBACK

The Politico asks whether Senator Clinton can actually make a comeback tonight and concludes, the better to make an interesting story, that she can:

For weeks, the widespread expectation among most campaign journalists has been that the race for the Democratic nomination will, for all practical purposes, come to an end Tuesday night with a victory for Barack Obama.

Given the predictive record of reporters so far this election cycle, that is by itself a good reason to believe that Hillary Rodham Clinton is headed later this evening for a game-changing comeback in Ohio and Texas.

If it happens, we can think of five reasons why.

Several have as much to do with the idiosyncrasies of news media psychology — and the way this influences political story lines — as they do with any tactical brilliance by Clinton’s campaign.

After all, Clinton’s operatives have been complaining for months about Obama’s unreadiness to be commander in chief and a double standard in coverage. Only in recent days have these protests started to get much traction.

Please delete this story if actual voters render it obsolete a few hours from now. But until the results come in, take some time to contemplate the hidden reasons for the Clinton Comeback.

As the writers openly say, voters can place this story in the trash can.  But it's a good, juicy story.  Here's the first of the five reasons they give for a Hillary comeback.  You can read the others if you wish:

The "SNL" Factor. Just when you thought no one watched "Saturday Night Live" anymore, the show made a star cameo on this year’s trail. The Not Ready for Prime Time Players were brutally effective in exposing the fawning coverage of Obama. Never underestimate the power of shame in journalism. "SNL’s" mockery went straight to reporters’ insecurities. Being accused of falling “in the tank” for a candidate is the journalistic equivalent of a nerdish high school freshman getting a wedgie from the jocks.

It is no coincidence that the past few days have seen reporters acting tough with stories about Obama’s relationship with a Chicago influence-peddler, his sincerity in opposing NAFTA and his stiff-arming of questions from the press.

I think there's a lot of truth in that.  Leave it to comedians, late night and otherwise, to shape the debate. 

BARACK LOSES IT

People wonder whether Barack Obama, who's never been in the military, who's never, apparently, fought anything harder than a moot-court competition at Harvard, is tough enough to be president.  Those questions are unlikely to be put to rest by the candidate's performance at a press conference yesterday: 

SAN ANTONIO, Tex. - An exasperated Barack Obama scurried away Monday from the toughest news conference of his campaign, telling reporters who kept shouting questions that he'd spent enough time on the grill.

"Come on! I just answered, like, eight questions," Obama, looking surprised, told shouting reporters as he fled the room. "We're running late."

The Clinton campaign has long complained that Obama gets soft treatment from the press corps. But Monday's exchange was no pillow fight.

The first question was about a private talk an Obama economic adviser had with a Canadian official - reportedly saying that the harshness of Obama's criticisms of the North American Free Trade Agreement was for political show.

Last week, Obama denied an initial media report about the conversation. But after a Canadian government memo surfaced, he acknowledged yesterday there was a conversation.

"When I gave you that information, that was the information that I had at the time," he said. His camp still disputes the memo's account of the discussion.

The questioning then turned to Obama's links to ex-fund-raiser Tony Rezko, who went on trial in Chicago Monday on corruption charges. A reporter asserted Obama hadn't fully answered journalists' questions on Rezko.

Obama insisted he had - during a past news conference with Chicago media. But another persisted that questions remain unanswered, such as ones about fund-raisers Rezko held for him.

Obama replied, "These requests, I think, can just go on forever. ..." He said the "pertinent" information had been provided.

When Obama declared the press conference over, one reporter yelled that he was dodging questions just minutes after claiming he wasn't.

This is not good.  Obama said, "I just answered, like, eight questions."  First:  Stop talking like a teenager.  Second:  Eight questions?  Have you ever watched a presidential news conference?  Are we talking eight questions?

The pressure is on.  It will get worse if Clinton scores some points tonight and the battle continues.  Another performance like that and the press will start treating Barack Obama the way Hillary Clinton treated Monica Lewinsky.

SHORT CAREER AHEAD

There are idiots, and then there are real idiots.  Marion Cotillard won the Oscar for best actress this year, for her portrayal of the singer Edith Piaf.  We then learned that she thinks 9-11 was an American hoax and that men didn't walk on the moon.  This endeared her immediately to heartland USA.  Now she shows that she really understands the modern American political culture by presenting herself as a victim:

Marion Cotillard, the Oscar-winning French actress, will not apologise over remarks she made describing the 9/11 attacks as a conspiracy and believes that the comments had been taken out of context and misunderstood.

Cotillard, who won the Best Actress statuette last week for her portrayal of Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose, has claimed that the September 11 atrocity had been orchestrated by the owners of the Twin Towers.

The comments, made in an interview first broadcast a year ago, have resurfaced on the internet since her Oscar victory.

The actress's agent, Bastien Duval, told The Times that Cotillard, who charmed the crowd with her emotional acceptance speech after winning her Oscar, was "still in shock" at the angry reaction to her comments in the United States.

Now tell me, if you say that 9-11 was a hoax, and that it was orchestrated by the owners of the Twin Towers, how can that be taken out of context and misunderstood?

Also, the actress seems to have a low shock threshold.  Why would she be shocked at the reaction to her idiotic remarks?

Why don't I think she'll ever be America's sweetheart?

IT'S ONLY MONEY?  NOT.

I've been meaning for days now to run this excellent piece from Investor's Business Daily, sent by reader Jackie Reckseit, on the risky business of Islamic finance.  It's risky because some of the cash might be put to, well, awkward uses: 

With oil prices hovering around $100 a barrel, more than $1 trillion in petrodollars are now available annually for global investment. And major U.S. financial institutions, hit hard by the credit crunch, are hungrily eyeing them.

Citibank and Goldman Sachs, for example, are creating investment vehicles that cater to Muslim investors in order to grab some of the billions in management fees in the offing. These products include Shariah-compliant bonds, mutual funds, mortgages, insurance, hedge funds and soon REITs.

But there are some little problems:

Wall Street is jumping into this hot new market oblivious to the risks not just to the bottom line, but to national security. It knows little about Shariah law and is turning to consultants to create "ethical" products to sell.

Lost in the hype over these Muslim-friendly funds is that they must "purify" their returns by transferring at least 3% into Islamic charities, many of which funnel funds to terrorists. So the Street may unwittingly be helping the evildoers launder blood money.

Shariah law obligates that a sizable portion of zakat, or giving — one of the pillars of Islam — go to support jihad. So many of the purification donations generated from Shariah finance could wind up in the hands of our enemy.

Wall Street also knows little about who's advising these funds. Each has to hire Muslim scholars to bless the investments.

That must be some blessing.  I'd love to get the English translation.  What's money talk for "blow up the infidels"?

Read the whole thing, and remember this paragraph:

The main purpose of Shariah law is to promote Islam as the only legitimate governing system and to help establish its rule worldwide. Shariah-compliant finance is a means to that end.

Talk to your broker.  Ask questions.

YOU TOO, MO?

We are now informed that Moses, at the most critical moment of his life, was probably high on drugs.  You know, you just can't trust anyone:

JERUSALEM (AFP) — High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.

Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don't believe, or a legend, which I don't believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the "burning bush," suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.

I have to be blunt here.  I don't buy it.  It's ridiculous.  If Moses were high on drugs, those tablets he hauled down from Sinai would have read:  "Hey, man, some things are uncool, y'know what I mean, like, I mean, offin' someone or grabbin' his squeeze, y'know?  And remember mommy and daddy.  Hey, you gotta call 'em and make nice.  It's like, the big guy says so."

That, Professor Shanon, is what a "high" priest sounds like. 

And, after that, if you'll have me, I'll be back later tonight.

Posted on March 4, 2008.