If there's one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on during this election year, it's this: both prospective First Ladies are impressive women. And they're knockouts! Whichever of these women ends up in the White House, millions of ordinary American women -- and men -- will emulate her.

That's right: Men. So which of these ladies do men see as more of a role model? Watch the short videos below, then vote.

We'll start with Michelle...



And now let's take a look at Cindy...



What about you, guys?

Clinton Campaign Guru Howard Wolfson makes a decent point when he says that Hillary would have been the nominee had John Edwards' affair been uncovered before the Iowa Caucuses.

Then again, there are hypotheticals that can be posited for any imaginable outcome:

If Chris Dodd had saved a woman who'd fallen into one of Cedar Rapids' famous grain silos, then he might very well have won the caucuses.

If every other candidate had been bedridden with mono for the three months preceding Iowa, then Mike Gravel might have become the nominee.

If Barack Obama had been attacked by a shark while campaigning on the shores of Iowa's Lake Okoboji, he likely would have pulled out of the campaign, handing a victory to John Edwards in the caucuses. (Then, by the time Edwards' infidelity was revealed, a recovered one-armed Obama would make the perfect comeback story!)

Whatever the legitimacy of the Clinton campaign's complaints, there clearly is not peace among Democrats. Although Obama is now offering Hillary the keynote speaking slot on the convention's Tuesday, Hillary still has not said she won't seek a roll call vote. And the prospect of the roll call vote would weaken Obama, no doubt. Bill Clinton's refusal to say that Obama is prepared to be President hurts him more.

So what is Hillary holding out for? She got almost as many votes as he did, so she should hold out for a big parting gift. My recommendation:

Rebecca Traister has a great piece up on Salon.com about the real reasons Clinton supporters are mad that Obama won.

Sour grapes? Yes, but there's more to these voters, some of whom Traister says are calling themselves "'PUMAs' (as in, 'Party Unity My Ass')" than simple sore loserdom.

Among the insights: "They are mad at Mark Penn." (#9) and "They are mad at everyone who believes them to be old, white and racist." (#11)

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama claimed over and over during the primaries that they were strong leaders who could take America in a new direction. They also claimed that George W. Bush was the worst president in US history. Then, how come they have never been able to beat him in almost any legislative battles?

This week they surrendered again. This time it was about giving immunity to telecommunication companies who broke the law to placate the Bush administration. Nearly everyone involved admits they broke the law -- otherwise they wouldn't need immunity.

I didn't rob a bank, so I don't need immunity for robbery. Everyone should have their rights, and that definitely applies to the telecom companies and the Bush administration as well, so it should be very simple for them to go into a courthouse and show there was nothing wrong with what they did. Except they can't, and that's why desperately need immunity for the crimes they have committed.

This isn't about spying on terrorists. The FISA court gives out warrants like they're growing on trees. If they spied on terrorists, it's the easiest thing in the world to show. No, this is for breaking the law and spying on Americans without a court order. Do we know who they spied on? No, and now we never will. Why? The Democrats are going to give these companies -- and by extension the Bush administration -- immunity for breaking the law.

In essence, the Democrats are giving a preemptive pardon to George Bush and everyone else that authorized and participated in this illegal surveillance program.

Now, if we only had a couple of strong leaders on the Democratic side who could stop this. Oh wait a minute, I remember two people that kept telling me how strong and capable they were. One of them even claimed that change was coming. You know when it might be a good time for change? Right about now.

Instead, Hillary Clinton is on vacation somewhere doing absolutely nothing about this immunity bill. When it's not about her career, all of a sudden she's not that moved to fight for us, our laws and our constitution. Since she's not going to be president, she's taken her ball and gone home.

And what about Obama? Nothing. Worse than nothing, because he's actually thinking about voting with the Republicans on a so-called compromise, which in the words of Sen. Feingold is nothing short of a "capitulation." Leadership you can believe in!

You think I sound angry here, you should have seen me all week on the show. If you want to see what I think of pathetic Democratic weakness, watch this (not safe for work or with kids around). The Democrats make it nearly impossible to respect them. And if you want to see what I think of Senator Clinton and Senator Obama's awful record of leadership on this issue, watch this:




If you can't beat the most unpopular president of all time in a simple legislative fight like this, how can you claim to be a strong and effective leader?

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Are we tired yet of psychoanalyzing Hillary's disgruntled supporters?

No? Okay.

Today Slate has two major headlines about Hillary-supporter-courting and Salon has big stories on whether or not Hillary should be Obama's VP.

When you look at the speeches of John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama last night, one things becomes clear. There is one speech which lacked all energy, excitement and interest -- and that clearly was John McCain's.

We did a mashup of their speeches from Tuesday night, we picked some of McCain's best moments to be fair to him and it still looks pretty miserable by comparison:




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Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination tonight, but you couldn't tell that if you were listening to Hillary Clinton's speech. I really thought she would have the good sense to know when the fight is over. But her refusal to concede tonight went from determination to derangement. Everybody likes a good tough fighter, but no one likes someone who keeps hitting after the bell has rung. It's ugly.

Watch her speech here (this is the part where she refuses to acknowledge that Obama has won) and then we explain how crazy this decision is:




Then Obama spoke and he was very gracious to her, even though he had already heard that she wouldn't concede. What more does he have to do? He passed the magic number. He has more pledged delegates, super delegates, overall delegates (and more popular votes too, despite Clinton's maniacal and completely unjustifiable claims to the contrary). The race was to get to a majority of the delegates -- and he got there. What is there not to concede?

There is one possible explanation for Hillary's actions tonight, I explain that in the clip below. First you'll see Obama's historic speech (the part where he claims victory) and then hear the possible reason Hillary is still hanging around in this race:




By the way, did you see McCain's speech tonight? Wow, that was embarrassing. It was anemic, lame and lacked even one percent of the energy of Clinton or Obama's speech. Unless some world changing event happens, McCain doesn't stand a chance. Anyone who saw Obama's speech and McCain's speech tonight can see that plain as day.

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UPDATE: The Associated Press has just announced that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination. According to their tally and the uncommitted delegates they spoke to, Senator Obama will go over the magic number tonight with even the minimum amount of votes (30% of the vote) from Montana and South Dakota.

It's finally over. It should be interesting to watch both of their speeches tonight. Let's see how Senator Clinton handles the loss. Earlier, I wrote about her upcoming speech tonight:

There are now many reports out that Hillary Clinton is preparing a concession speech on Tuesday night after the primary season finally comes to an end with the South Dakota and Montana races. What was the deal struck to make this happen and what are the signs that it's actually going to happen? Get the details in the short video below:




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Hillary Clinton is allowed to say the most awful things about Barack Obama, but any time Hillary Clinton gets in trouble, she uses women voters as her defense shield. Obama better not strike back, he better not criticize her in any way, shape or form because otherwise Hillary Clinton will take her women voters and go home.

Obama is stuck in a position where he has to keep absorbing these hits but can't hit back for fear of alienating Clinton's voters. She keeps using this to batter him. She even used this strategy to defend her horrific comments about RFK's assassination. How? We explain in the video below:




Here is actual the paragraph from the Hillary editorial I am quoting above:

I am running for all those women in their 90s who've told me they were born before women could vote, and they want to live to see a woman in the White House. For all the women who are energized for the first time, and voting for the first time. For the little girls - and little boys - whose parents lift them onto their shoulders at our rallies, and whisper in their ears, "See, you can be anything you want to be." As the first female candidate in this position, I believe I have a responsibility to finish this race.

I am running for all the men and women I meet who wake up every day and work hard to make a difference for their families. People who deserve a shot at the American Dream - the chance to save for college, a home and retirement; to afford quality health care for their families; to fill the gas tank and buy the groceries with a little left over each month.

I'm sick of her tactics, her excuses, her lies and her disingenuous reasons for continuing to stay in the race. It has absolutely nothing to do with these voters. It has to do with the fact that she cannot believe she won't get to be president -- what she had always assumed to be her right. She suffered through all of Bill's dalliances just so she could get into this position. She was the anointed one. It was supposed to be her. She cannot and she will not let it go. And it has now become sad and embarrassing.

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Many Clinton supporters, including Geraldine Ferraro, are now saying that Obama ran a sexist campaign and that Senator Clinton might have lost because of sexism. In the video below, we have their quotes and their charges, and we also discuss whether that idea has any merit:




What do you think? Did Hillary Clinton lose because of sexism? Did her gender help her or hurt her? And was Obama in any way sexist against Clinton?

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Just about every four years, we hear about how this election is going to be a transformational election and how the direction of the country is going to be permanently changed and how our children and grand-children will be affected by what we decide now. In reality, transformational elections are rare and this election doesn't look like it's going to change much no matter who is elected.

History shows that America is a one-party state. What I mean by this is that one party tends to dominate and the other party tends to be a "me too" party. In the early nineteenth century, the Democratic Party established itself as the majority party in the era of Andrew Jackson. That lasted about forty years until the Civil War, when the Republican Party under Abraham Lincoln seized majority status. The GOP dominated American politics from 1865 until 1932, when Franklin Roosevelt inaugurated an era of Democratic hegemony. For most of the twentieth century, from the thirties until 1980, the Democrats controlled the government. Reagan's election in 1980 began our current epoch of Republican and conservative domination.

How do we know that this has been a conservative era? Not just by the number of Republicans who have occupied the White house. We also know by looking at the behavior of Democrats who have managed to get elected. Today Bill Clinton goes around boasting, "We won the Cold War." "We fixed welfare." "We signed the free trade agreements." "We put the lid on spending." Remarkably all Clinton's accomplishments are conservative accomplishments. At least one of them, welfare reform, was signed reluctantly because of GOP pressure. None would have been possible without conservative support. Clinton's liberal ideas, such as gays in the military and national health care, went down in flames. In sum, Clinton was dragged by the conservative tide and basically governed as a moderate Republican.

Is the conservative era now finished? Many of the pundits say it is, but I see no sign of it from the actions of the three presidential candidates. McCain of course has largely pleged to "stay the course." His independence is genuine but it does not constitute a departure from Reagan principles. Mostly McCain is a temperamental departure from Bush. Interestingly Hillary seems to have tempered her erstwhile radicalism. As a senator she has generally occupied the right flank of the Democratic party, voting for example to authorize the use of force in Iraq. Even in the campaign Hillary has sounded cautious notes, warning of the danger of negotiating with Iran, promising a staged rather than precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, an so on.

That leaves Obama, who sounds transformational in his rhetoric. But where is the actual change that Obama is proposing? Basically Obama's argument is that he is different because he grew up in many different places, has a black father and a white mother, and because his grandmother lives in an African village. Obama claims to be different because of his name and his background. So is Obama going to radically overhaul the tax system? No. Is he going to change America's longtime alliance with Israel or our special friendship with Great Britain? No. Does he have any new ideas for reshaping race relations in this country? If so he has kept them entirely to himself. Even Obama's tiresome repetition of the need to change the way Washington does business is unaccompanied by any concrete strategies for changing the modus operandi in the nation's capital.

One of these days we will have a transformational election, as we did in 1932 or 1980. But so far this doesn't look like one at all. The long shadow of Reagan still hangs over American politics, shaping the way the presidential candidates see themselves and the world.

We've got to thank Barack Obama. It looks like he has sealed Hillary Clinton's fate. Yes, Slick Hillary will continue with her false smiles and false assurances, but everything is beginning to ring hollow. I wouldn't be surprised if Hillary got out of the race soon.

The Democratic primaries sure have been fun. To me they have been reminiscent of the Iran-Iraq war. Needless to say, I have been hoping for heavy casualties on both sides! Hillary's attacks on Obama have taken a toll. It was especially gratifying to hear Hillary make the argument that both she and McCain are vastly more experienced than Obama. Surely McCain will get some mileage out of that in the next several months. Hillary also raised questions about whether Obama can be trusted in an emergency. Again, this is a theme that can only benefit McCain. Between the questions raised by Hillary and the doubts raised by Obama's association with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's reputation has been tarnished.

Ambivalent though I am about Obama, I must credit him with saving the nation from the prospect of another Clinton presidency. For eight years the Clintons used the Oval Office for personal self-aggrandizement, renting out the Lincoln bedroom, selling pardons, and chasing around the hired help. Yes, Bill was the lecher, but Hillary was the enabler. I wonder if this is the "experience" she has been touting on the campaign, since I'm not sure what else she accomplished over her eight years as First Lady. Finally America may be ridding itself of this cunning, opportunistic duo.

Contrast the Clintons with other recent presidencies and the difference becomes apparent. Many people disagree with and even loathe Bush but it's hard to say that Bush became president for personal gain. All the folks who said he invaded Iraq for the sake of oil interests have never shown Bush to be the beneficiary of any such gains. By contrast, the Clintons came to Washington virtually broke and have been cashing in since day one. Now the couple since has a net worth in excess of $100 million. Is there any precedent for such self-enrichment? George H.W. Bush and Reagan and Ford and Carter had their share of Oval Office troubles but all of them involved disagreements about policy. No one suggested that these men were using their office for their own benefit. The Clintons are clearly in a low class of their own.

Good riddance to the Clintons also means good riddance to the era of the 1960s. The self-indulgent, megalomaniacal sixties generation is not only an embarassment to itself, it also represents the great failure of the World War II generation. For all its accomplishments, the "greatest generation" failed in one significant respect: it couldn't replicate itself but produced instead the spoiled children of the Clinton generation.

This November, America will have a choice between an independent-minded candidate of the World War II generation and an inspiring but also troubling candidate of the post-sixties generation. Meanwhile, it appears, two sullen, resentful Clintons will be watching from the wings.

... then check out this image, sent from my friend Mario. In his words: "Nuff said."



What caption works best?

Hillary Must Go! ... Hillary Going Out of Business ... (Help me out here, guys)

There are two interesting things that came out of John McCain's last appearance on The O'Reilly Factor. One, he clearly lied about voting for Bush in 2000. Arianna Huffington said earlier this week that he told a table full of guests at a dinner they had together that he did not vote for Bush in the 2000 general election. Since then, there have been four other witnesses that corroborated Huffington's story to The Washington Post, New York Times and LA Times.

That's part of the reason why McCain looks and sounds so nervous below, which leads to the second interesting point. He has entered the maniacal laughter competition with Hillary Clinton. His laugh below is so forced and awkward that it's a little painful to look at. So, check out the video below and then tell us who has the weirder laugh, McCain or Hillary:




So, who gets your vote?

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In the video below we explain the main two strategic errors that the Clinton team made. We also talk about the third reason they lost -- their frame of mind. Find out what their two big mistakes were and how their arrogance cost them this election:




Here is the Time magazine article I referenced in the video above.

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