Getting everything Clinton out of my system...

I mean the news, you idiot! You really thought I was doing what you thought I was doing? Then you aren't the blog reader that I thought you were!

The Senator appeared on The Colbert Report last week. You can watch the video at Comedy Central. While you are at it, you can read about her visit with Stephen here.

Clinton walked on to the opening of the show, taped before a live audience at the University of Pennsylvania, pretending to repair a technical problem and fix host Stephen Colbert's makeup before rushing off the set.

"You are so prepared for any situation," said a mock-stunned Colbert.

The New York senator replied: "Call me anytime."

"Really?" Colbert asked.

"Sure," Clinton replied. Then she added: "Call me at 3 a.m.," before rushing off to attend a block party in northeast Philadelphia.

Hmmm...this one is interesting. Is Obama the new John Kerry?

The specter of John Kerry in 2004 is beginning to haunt the Democrats in 2008. It is the specter of wimpy campaigns past. It showed up, like Banquo's ghost, at the debate Wednesday night in Philadelphia, particularly when Hillary Clinton joined with ABC's George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson to nip away at the edges of Barack Obama's patriotism. Between the questions about Obama's meager association with William Ayers, a former Weatherman, and the suspicions raised by his lack of a flag lapel pin, the likely nominee is slowly being turned into John Kerry. He is becoming, in other words, a candidate who may be mostly right about national security but who will lack the Red State street cred to carry his point—and the election.

Once again timorous Democratic advisers behind the scenes are hoping they can run mainly on the ailing economy. While their candidates are urging an end to George W. Bush's war in Iraq, they are terrified of questioning the larger premises of his "war on terror" or John McCain's redefinition of it as the "transcendent challenge of the 21st century." Today's Dems are, in other words, proving unequal to the task of reclaiming the party's mostly honorable heritage on national security. This view is sadly out of touch, today more than ever. To little notice, Obama's tough, clearly stated position on Bush's war—that it was disastrously misdirected toward Iraq when Afghanistan was always the real front—is becoming conventional wisdom, even among the Bush administration's top security officials, like Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. During two days of nearly impenetrable testimony on Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker last week, one answer rang out as clearly as an alarm bell. Under questioning from Joe Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Crocker admitted that Al Qaeda poses a greater threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan than it does in Iraq. No one knows more about this than the ambassador, an Arabic-speaking diplomat who previously served as envoy to Pakistan and whose career practically tells the story of America and the age of terror going back to the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut.

Yet the region that poses America's number one threat is getting little in attention and resources compared to Iraq. What Obama is arguing on the stump is pretty close to what Gates and the Joint Chiefs have been quietly hearing from their military advisers: that the best the United States can do with its scant NATO force of 37,000 in Afghanistan is to hold off the resurgent Taliban and their Al Qaeda guests in a stalemate. Under current conditions Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the chief culprits of 9/11, will continue to have plenty of room to roam, unharried by any large-scale U.S. or Pakistani effort to go after them. This is even truer today; next door to Afghanistan, Pakistan is transitioning into a post-Musharraf era and seeking to negotiate more with the extremists. Obama called last year for two additional brigades to be sent to Afghanistan, and last week he was joined by Biden, who told an audience at Georgetown University that "the longer we stay in Iraq, the more we put off the day when we fully join the fight against the real Al Qaeda threat and finally defeat those who attacked America seven years ago." Biden added that Gen. Dan McNeil, commander of the international force in Afghanistan, told him during a visit in February "that with two extra combat brigades—about 10,000 soldiers—he could turn around the security situation in the south, where the Taliban is on move. But he can't get them because of Iraq." Even Hillary Clinton has been tacking, very quietly, in Obama's direction.

Obama's bitter remark just might come back to bite him in the tuchas!

If someone quacks like an elitist, he just might be one.

Here's a shock if you ever saw one. The Pittsburgh-Tribune Review endorsed Clinton!

In policy terms, relatively little may separate these two. Obama ranks as one of the most liberal U.S. senators, but Clinton is no conservative. Determining how they differ is difficult, though, because Obama is long on soaring rhetoric yet painfully short on record.

He has spent just three years in the U.S. Senate. Before that, he spent just eight years as one of 177 state legislators in Illinois. Before that, he was a university lecturer, a community organizer, a civil-rights lawyer.

Quite simply, this is no portfolio for a president, the world's most powerful leader. The presidency is no place for on-the-job training in the best of times -- and certainly not when the nation is at war, the economy is struggling, and federal governance in general is adrift.

More disturbing is what seems to be Obama's private view of America.[...]

In sharp contrast, Clinton is far more experienced in government -- as an engaged first lady to a governor and a president, as a second-term senator in her own right.

She has a real voting record on key issues. Agree with her or not, you at least know where she stands instead of being forced to wonder.

Many of her views on domestic issues are too liberal for us, but on others she seems to have moderated. She told the Trib she opposes raising the cap on Social Security taxes, and she is less eager to raise income taxes than Obama.

More important, she is extremely knowledgeable on crucial foreign issues. Meeting with Trib editors last month, she ticked off an impressive list of international challenges and the solutions. (In Wednesday's Philadelphia debate, Obama praised George H.W. Bush's foreign policy -- apparently not realizing that one of its architects was then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, a man he regularly excoriates.)

As we noted at the time of that meeting, Clinton's decision to sit down with the Trib was courageous, given our longstanding criticism of her. That is no small matter: Political courage is essential in a president. Clinton has demonstrated it; Obama has not.

She has a real record. He doesn't.

She has experience of value to a president. He doesn't.

Clearly, she's the wiser choice to represent Democrats this fall.

Tim Ryan has endorsed Sen. Clinton.

Sen. Clinton pens some last words on the campaign trail before today's primary.

Because everybody knows his name, Ted Danson went on the stump for Sen. Clinton.

Ted Danson walked into the Cucina Maria on Sunday, a place where everybody knew his name.

But the Emmy and Golden Globe winning Hollywood star made it clear while thanking the campaign workers of presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton that his commitment to her election is more than just a publicity draw.

“What I have to offer is our friendship and knowing her as a human being,” Danson said of Clinton, a personal friend of his wife, the former Mary Steenburgen, for 30 years, and himself for 15 years.

That, as well as a staunch belief in her plans for stimulating America’s economy by safeguarding the environment.[...]

“Thanks for working hard for Hillary,” Danson said, shaking hands and having his photo taken with each of the 35 or so workers and supporters there. “And Larry Bird never gave up either,” he joked to several.

“This is the most important election in our lifetime,” he said as he answered questions from the media, noting a delicate balance on hold right now between the economy, foreign affairs and environmental issues, all of which he said are interrelated.

Danson said for years environmentalists have been pitted against industrialists, referring to the scenarios which portrayed the country as having to choose between cutting jobs to meet environmental standards, or letting industrial practices run rampant on the eco-system

“That’s a bogus argument,” Danson said, describing the “millions of jobs” that middle class skilled trades workers such as electricians could be working building solar panels, recycling facilities and other alternative energy facilities.

“We have to keep the manufacturing base here,” he said, later noting that “you can’t export recycling jobs,” and that Americans need to “start talking about the environment in terms of jobs.”

But along with environmental concerns, Danson also expressed concern for the sky-rocketing cost of higher education, stating “the loans are ridiculous” in reference to student loans.

All of which is further compounded by unfair trade agreements with countries to whom the United States is so deeply in debt that negotiations are difficult.

“It’s like Bill Clinton said,” he stated, referring to former President Clinton’s recent speech in which he described fighting off trade agreements with nations such as China while owing them trillions of dollars.

“Everything is so complicated,” he said. “We really need a bright, bright person.”

And for a family friend of the Clintons who knows Hillary personally, he said she’s the one.

“I really like a person who can take a punch and keep getting up,” he said. “No one takes a punch like Hillary Clinton,” he said, noting she’s one of the hardest workers he’s ever met and a “chronic problem solver”

“If I tell Hillary about a problem I’m having I’d better be ready for her to fix it.”

Clinton is also an “authentic person,” he said, who talks to his children the same way she speaks to world leaders.

And with Tuesday’s primary election in Pennsylvania running tight, the opportunity for Hoosier voters to choose the Democratic party’s candidate is imminent.

“You guys here in Indiana are going to do it,” he said. “If Pennsylvania passes you the ball, then you can slam dunk it here in Indiana”

But regardless of whom one supports, Danson encourages everyone to volunteer in the process.

“Volunteers are the heart and soul of the candidates,” he said. “The eyes of the world are on Indiana.”