“I haven’t gotten into the gutter on this. And you know, I’m not going
to stoop to Carville’s level. I barely know the guy in the first place.”
– New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, in an interview on Face the Nation, on James Carville comparing him to Judas for endorsing Sen. Barack Obama for president.
Sen. Barack Obama has extended his lead over Sen. Hillary Clinton among Democrats nationally to 52% to 42%, the third consecutive Gallup tracking poll in which he has held a statistically significant lead, and Obama’s largest lead of the year so far.
The last time a candidate held a double digit lead was in early February when Clinton led Obama by 11 points.
To alleviate the effects of inflation in Bahrain, the government has introduced a BD40 million (USD105 million) aid package – and Bahrain’s bloggers are unanimous in questioning how effective it will be, writes Ayesha Saldanha.
Beirut Spring posts about “good censorship” versus “bad censorship” and on the difference between censoring the Da Vinci Code and censoring Persepolis in Lebanon.
TOL Georgia comments on news that the opposition has called off its hunger strike after a second intervention from the Georgian patriarch. With no concessions forthcoming from the government, the blog wonders where the current political situation in Georgia leaves the opposition ahead of the May parliamentary vote.
Following the presidential and parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe yesterday, bloggers are reporting that the situation in Harare is tense, in Bulawayo MDC supporters are celebrating (MDC candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, has claimed victory) and all over the country there are rumours that Robert Mugabe has left the country for Mozambique.
Despite amendments to the law on public marches, rallies and demonstrations following the recently lifted state of emergency, the opposition continues to hold meetings on the streets of the Armenian capital. In order to circumvent the restrictions, the gatherings are held under the guise of playing chess, reading books or even eating fast food in public.
Brazil is warming up for local elections later this year, but the Supreme Electoral Court has just passed regulations that have raised eye-brows throughout the blogosphere: only candidates’ purpose-built web pages will be allowed. Blogs and ’social web’ facilities have not been subjected to a more comprehensive legislation and as a result these are now left in limbo. Will the netizen be silenced?
The Politico: “Sen. Hillary Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys, but also earning the campaign a reputation as something of a deadbeat in some small business circles.”
“In her most definitive comments to date on the subject,” Sen. Hillary Clinton “sought to put to rest any notion that she will drop out of the presidential race, pledging in an interview to not only compete in all the remaining primaries but also continue until there is a resolution of the disqualified results in Florida and Michigan,” the Washington Post reports.
Said Clinton: “I know there are some people who want to shut this down and I think they are wrong. I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests and until we resolve Florida and Michigan. And if we don’t resolve it, we’ll resolve it at the convention — that’s what credentials committees are for.”
Of course — despite the page one play of the story — it should be noted that every candidate pledges to stay in the race until the convention.
