The first ad is being run in North Carolina and is sponsored by the North Carolina Republican Party. The second ad is produced by Floyd Brown, who created the Willie Horton ad back in 1988, and is sponsored by 527 group, Citizens for a Safe and Prosperous America headed by California
State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. Here is their press release. A second ad focusing on driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants will also air in North Carolina. Two other groups are also preparing to enter the anti-Obama parade: “The Legacy Committee” and “The Justice Society of a New and Safer America.” Here is the list of financial supporters of the National Campaign Fund.

Obama has complained about the negative attacks on him. And my side has complained about his duplicitous statements. But Barack Obama ain’t seen nothing yet. At least not until this weekend.

Here is an ABC News report with the background on the claims made in the second ad.

If you go back to before Iowa, we never expected to win Pennsylvania.”

That was Jesse Jackson, Jr., a manager on the Obama campaign, tonight commenting on the results in Pennsylvania. Then can you kindly explain why the Obama campaign chose to invest more than $11 million USD in pursuit of an objective that you had long foresworned and believed unteneable? It seems like a waste of resources to pump all that cash down the drain. Maybe you’ve never been to business school so perhaps you’re not familiar with the concept of sunk costs. And just so we can rest easier at night, can you tell us now which states in the Fall do you expect to win and which ones you don’t since your campaign seems to possess a clairvoyance to go along with its messianic character?

Will you win Massachusetts? Do you think you can win Ohio, Kentucky or Missouri? How about the working class generally, you know the ones that are the key to winning any national election? Or do you think you win just based on academics, college kids and African-Americans?

Please let us know.

“The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on those votes.”

That was what Obama Campaign Strategist David Axelrod said on NPR this morning, explaining why Obama lost Pennsylvania; and implying that Obama would not do much better in the general election with white lower-income workers.

Well he certainly couldn’t do much worse. Hillary won at every income level below $150,000, and Obama only won with the wealthiest Pennsylvania voters. But no Obama isn’t seen as an elitist.

The race for the Democratic Nomination will continue.

Hillary Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania last night has extended the primary to the next round of contests (Indiana and North Carolina on May 6) and has maintained the competitive nature of the race.

With her 10-point victory, we should expect her poll numbers and resources to increase in the coming days. Primary wins, especially in the 2008 election cycle, have had a direct impact on the national polling numbers for the candidates and when national polling numbers increase, so do campaign donations.

Since last night, the Clinton campaign reportedly raised $10 million dollars online - enough to make a significant dent in upcoming media buys in North Carolina and Indiana. Barack Obama continues to surpass fundraising expectations and will most likely continue to do so.

Pennsylvania exit polls tell an interesting story that has implications for November.

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Andrea Mitchell noted this morning that last night for the first half-hour after the polls closed in Pennsylvania, exit polls pointed to 5 point Obama win. She relayed how she got a few anxious e-mails from Clinton supporters asking her if she knew anything. She didn’t but as soon as the precincts started reporting it was clear that an Obama win was not in the cards. As it turned out, Clinton won by a comfortable 10 point margin so that’s a 15 point differential between the exit polls and the results.

This is not the first time that the exit polls have overstated Obama’s position so what’s going on? (more…)

It is increasingly clear that Senator Clinton is beginning to hit her stride. Her victory speech last night struck the right tone and touched on the key themes not only of this primary selection but also those of the forthcoming general election. The economy is the issue and she gets working class voters. She understands their worries and more importantly will be a tireless advocate of their behalf. It is also clear that campaign shake-ups are paying results. Maggie Wilson has really turned the message around and the voters are responding. Having been outspent nearly 3:1 overall and 4:1 in the Philadelphia market, Clinton did well enough in Philadelphia and surprisingly won both suburban Bucks and Montgomery counties. In fact, Clinton won 61 of the 67 Pennsylvania counties, a stunning 14 of them by over 70%.

While losing the rural and small towns is old hat to Obama, losing in the suburbs is not. He has carried more affluent suburbanites as recently as Texas. Obama’s core is down to African-Americans which went 92% for him and the under thirty crowd which broke 58% for Obama. That’s hardly the sort of demographics the Democratic Party can rely on to win in November.

While Obama was silent this morning, Senator Clinton was on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News. Her appearance on Morning Joe with Joe Scarborough who noted that he is “in the tank” for her and wistfully called her “my gal” is a sharp departure that she receives from the rest of media.

Just before Super Tuesday on January 31st, 2008, Obama argued that one of the reasons that he was the better nominee was that he could bring together a wider coalition to win in November.

“I am confident I will get her votes if I’m the nominee,” Obama stressed. “It’s not clear she would get the votes I got if she were the nominee.”

That may have been true then but it’s not true any longer. As Tucker Carlson noted on MSNBC’s Morning Joe programme this morning, “people increasingly have a profound problem with Obama.” In Pennsylvania, the exit polls note that “profound problem.” Among Obama supporters 69% said they would support Clinton in the general election if she were to be nominee while 12% would opt for McCain and 19% would abstain. But among Clinton supporters in Pennsylvania only 53% would support Obama if he were to be the nominee while 25% would vote for McCain and 18% would sit this one out.

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Tomorrow is Dining Out for Life in San Francisco. Dining Out For Life is an annual fundraising event where San Francisco restaurants donate a portion of proceeds to San Francisco area AIDS agencies. If you live in the Bay Area, you can check participating restaurants at Dining Out for Life.

I’ll be dining with friends at Sumi on 18th and Collingwood. Hope to see you there!

Well the Australian Professional Ocean Lifeguard Association is recruiting. Where do I sign up? This advert was made for the recent gay Mardi Gras, the world’s largest gay cultural event, held in Sydney in late March aimed at recruiting more LGBT members. It seems they have quite a few already.

Here is today’s edition of interesting reads from around the world:

Coal in Europe
Environmentally friendly Europe is turning to environmentally unfriendly coal as oil prices continue to rise as noted in this article in today’s New York Times.

The fast-expanding developing economies of India and China, where coal remains a major fuel source for more than two billion people, have long been regarded as among the biggest challenges to reducing carbon emissions. But the return now to coal even in eco-conscious Europe is sowing real alarm among environmentalists who warn that it is setting the world on a disastrous trajectory that will make controlling global warming impossible.

Just a few months ago, I read Coal: A Human History by Barbara Freese, the former Assistant Attorney General of Minnesota and in charge of enforcing Minnesota’s air pollution standards. She concludes her book:

If we do trigger drastic climate change, all of coal’s contributions to the empowerment of humanity will be overshadowed by the enormous price of that power.

Deflation in the US and Japan
Global Economic Analysis has an interesting take on things and their post today asks if a weak dollar is masking deflation. The post has an interview with economist Paul Kasriel of the Northern Trust Company. The article draws on the Japanese asset bubbles of the 1990s from which Japan has yet to fully recover. I tend to think that Swedish recession of 1993-94 is more akin to the situation in the United States but it is hard not to concur with this assessment:

Right now what we have is deflation with a weak dollar. That weak dollar, in conjunction with peak oil, has caught nearly everyone off guard to the point they are screaming about oil prices and bond bubbles, while missing the far more important deflationary forces of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and massive writedowns in credit.

Islam in Europe
The German magazine Der Speigel has an article on Islamic Theologians Working Toward Euro-Islam.

Leading Muslim scholars are laying the theological foundations for a “Euro-Islam” which would reconcile their religion with the challenges of modernity. But just how compatible is Islam with secular Western values?

The answer is not at all. The two traditions are so wholly distinct that the notion of Islam being compatible is franky absurd. The better question is can we learn to co-exist? I hope so because we need to do so.

Bhutanese Healthcare
Bhutan is facing a shortage of Medical Professionals.

Slovakia & the Eurozone
Fistful of Euros (lucky them) updates us on Slovakia’s bid to join the euro currency zone.

Iran’s Nuclear Programme
The Asia Times has always been prime source for news on events in Iraq and they have been spot on in their assessments. Here is a story on Western Intelligence Lapses on Iran’s Nuclear Programme.

The major players in the field, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain’s MI6 among them, have failed to deliver the required intelligence when most needed. To add to the problems, in many cases the information that has been acquired has either been wrongly analyzed, of doubtful quality or has been simply ignored by their host government as an inconvenient irrelevance.