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I haven’t had a decent political post on here for a little while, so I thought I’d check out the news and see what we have cooking! Let’s start with Pennsylvania’s upcoming Primary. While everyone assumes Clinton will win, suddenly there were tons of “Obama can win it!!” articles and polls showing him either tied or in the lead. Weird how those polls work, as the polls released today show Clinton in the lead between 5 and 18 points. Did something change… or did all that hope make it seem like he was gonna win? There are still 13 days left before the Primary, will anything change by then? I guess the question is, is there anything in the news that could hurt him? Well, just from the past week this is what I found:

We Need More White People | ABC News

At a Michelle Obama event, reporters from the Carnegie-Mellon University student newspaper “observed one event coordinator say to another, ‘Get me more white people, we need more white people.’ To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, ‘We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.’

“‘I didn’t know they would say, “We need a white person here,”‘ said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. ‘I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.’”

Yes, nothing says “diversity” like a call for “I need a white person”. Moving on…

Michelle Obama visits Harrisburg | Charlotte Observer

Most Americans, she said, don’t want much.

“They don’t want the whole pie,” she told the women. “There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. But that is becoming even more out of reach.”

Should she become first lady, she said she’d focus on family issues.

“If we don’t wake up as a nation with a new kind of leadership…for how we want this country to work, then we won’t get universal health care,” she said.

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

Well, we know he’s taking some of NASA’s pie… anyone else they’d like to name? Or should it stay secret for now?

Obama Prepares Argument to Discard Public-Financing Principle | ABC News

Despite his previous pledge to enter into the public financing system should he be the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has recently been reluctant to re-commit to entering the system.

This reluctance has coincided with his primary, caucus, and fundraising successes. For that reluctance, Obama has been hammered as hypocritical by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., not to mention impartial observers.

Tonight at a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., at the National Museum of Women in the Arts — at a $2,300-per-person event for 200 people held before a $1,000-per-person reception for 350 people — Obama previewed his argument to justify this possible future discarding of a principle.

“We have created a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign they can get on the Internet and finance it, and they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful,” Obama said.

I see, it’s okay to waffle on an issue as long as it benefits you. That’s a real Change™ in politics… how refreshing.

Obama and Guns: Two Different Views | Fox News

[...] the Politico reported on Saturday that Barack Obama was making a big play for gun votes in Pennsylvania. It is not particularly surprising that this change is occurring with the crucial Pennsylvania primary soon approaching.

With about one million of the country’s 12.5 million hunters, Pennsylvania is number one in the nation in the amount of time its citizens spend hunting. With about 600,000 people with permits to carry concealed handguns, Pennsylvania also has more permit holders than any other state.

Yet, it should be a hard sell.

Obama has consistently supported gun control legislation that came up while he was in the Illinois state legislature and the U.S. Senate.

For example, when Obama ran for the Illinois state senate the political group, Independent Voters of Illinois (IVI), asked him if he supported a “ban [on] the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns” and he responded “yes.”

Realizing how damaging this could prove in the general election, his presidential campaign “flatly denied” Obama ever held this view, blaming it instead on a staffer from his state senate race.

But then IVI provided Politico the questionnaire with Obama’s own handwritten notes revising another answer. Members of IVI’s board of directors, some of whom have worked on Obama’s past campaigns, told Politico that “I always believed those to be his views, what he really believes in, and he’s tailoring it now to make himself more palatable as a nationwide candidate.”

But the IVI questionnaire isn’t the only one out there.

In 1998, another questionnaire administered by IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test didn’t ask about banning all handguns, but it did find that Obama wanted to “ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.”

Indeed, such a ban would outlaw virtually all handguns and the vast majority of rifles sold in the United States. [...]

In fact, I knew Obama during the mid-1990s, and his answers to IVI’s question on guns fit well with the Obama that I knew. Indeed, the first time I introduced myself to him he said “Oh, you are the gun guy.”

I responded “Yes, I guess so.” He simply responded that “I don’t believe that people should be able to own guns.” [...]

If taken literally, Obama’s statement to me was closer to what the IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test found, indicating that Obama’s bans would extend well beyond handguns.

Obama also opposes the current laws in 48 states that let citizens carry concealed handguns for protection claiming, despite all the academic studies to the contrary, that “I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations.”

Even Hillary Clinton disagrees with him on this. [...]

On both his Iraq and trade policies, Obama has already faced the embarrassing situations where his top advisors have had to tell people in other countries not to worry because he doesn’t believe what he is telling American voters.

With guns, it sure looks like Obama is again telling voters what they want to hear, not what he plans on doing.

Huh… you think that’d be getting more airtime? Oh well, I’m sure it’s not that important, right?

‘Strike Force’ Exposes Obama’s Defense Weakness | Human Events

What is the Obama “Strike Force”? Robert Maginnis, an internationally known security and foreign affairs analyst and retired Army Lt. Colonel, said “It is ambiguous at best.” In a speech last month Obama declared:

“In order to end this war responsibly, I will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. We can responsibly remove 1 to 2 combat brigades each month. If we start with the number of brigades we have in Iraq today, we can remove all of them 16 months. After this redeployment, we will leave enough troops in Iraq to guard our embassy and diplomats, and a counter-terrorism force to strike al Qaeda if it forms a base that the Iraqis cannot destroy. What I propose is not — and never has been — a precipitous drawdown. It is instead a detailed and prudent plan that will end a war nearly seven years after it started.”

[...] Meanwhile, the New York Sun reported that one of Obama’s key advisors Colin Kahn of the Center for the New American Security had written a policy memorandum suggesting a force of 60,000- 80,000 to play a “watch over” role. The Obama campaign, as they did with previous advisors (Austan Goolsbee on NAFTA and Samantha Power on Iraq) who veered from the far Left campaign rhetoric, quickly disassociated themselves from Kahn and refused to indicate the size of the residual force that Obama favored.

Remove all troops… keep thousands there as a “Strike Force”… same thing, right?

So with Obama’s popularity so high, I assume at this point there isn’t any well-known figure that would side on with Clinton on a major issue like Health Care, correct? Wait… what’s this?

Elizabeth Edwards backs Clinton’s health care plan over Obama’s | CNN

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, is picking sides in the Democratic nomination race – at least with respect to health care. In an interview that aired Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” she threw her support behind Sen. Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.

“In order to ensure that we have universal coverage, we need to say everybody has to join,” Edwards told ABC’s Robin Roberts. “So, for that reason, the mandates that Sen. Clinton is talking about, I think are going to be more successful in achieving the goal,” she added.

Both health care plans have the same goals, said Edwards, but “I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton’s policies than Sen. Obama’s on this particular issue.”

Well, it may not be her husband, but you know what they say about family (and blood being thicker than water). Interesting to note that, as John isn’t giving too many clues about who he favors.

Last but not least today… what does Mike Huckabee have going on now??  Take a look at his website:

MikeHuckabee.com

MSNBC has a few ideas, but no one will know until 12:00 PM EST, April 15th!  Well, that’s all for politics today.  Wow… that sure does take a lot out of a person!!!