Senator Obama's solution to high gas prices is telling Americans to make sure their tires are inflated.

-Rick Davis, McCain campaign manager

Keeping your tires inflated helps improve gas mileage.  Even NASCAR advertises this fact.  It's an imminently sensible thing to do.  It's a personally responsible thing to do.  Not only that but it could also save your life.  Which makes what John McCain and crew are trying to push by mocking Barack Obama's suggestion that we monitor tire pressure not only childish, petty and obnoxiously misguided but downright dangerous.

Follow me after the jump for a personal take on tire pressure . . .

"Obama, Obama, Obama"

"But is he ready to lead?"

When you are faced with overwhelming force and enthusiasm, I can see why you might choose ridicule. It's hard to get out there and campaign (work) five days a week and really it's easier to sit back on the side with an attractive woman (not that I find Cindy particularly attractive) on your arm and crack jokes. And so we have been forced to listen to a full week of smarmy, mean-spirited, sh*ttiness from the McCain campaign run ad nauseum on cable news. The more ridiculous the charge the more it gets amplified, like the worst highschool gossip or playground name calling: "Did you hear what John said about Barack now?"

Inspired by McCain's new ad:

I guess John McCain would rather lose our respect than lose an election

It appears John McCain would rather lose his bearings than lose an election.

It appears John McCain would rather hurl specious, lie-filled attacks at Barack Obama than lose an election.

It appears John McCain would rather try to distract us from his lack of an economic plan, health care plan or responsible energy plan than lose an election.

It appears that John McCain would rather have his campaign taken over by Karl Rove than lose an election.

Please don't recommend this diary. Recommend the mothership one here

Still needed for nomination: 26.5!

Welcome to the continuation of today's delegate countdown.

Estimates are for a minimum of 15-17 pledged delegates out of SD and MT tonight so we're hoping for some more supers to let the voters push him over the top today.

Our most recent endorsements came from Jimmy Carter of GA (who is that guy) as of 2:51 PM EST.  Updates will follow.

Yesterday I tried hard to focus on the Obama campaign's positive and magnanimous response to Hillary Clinton's poorly chosen, craven words linking her continuing in a lost cause to her husband's run in 1992 and Bobby Kennedy's tragic assassination in 1968.  I felt like this was the best tact since others had so eloquently expressed outrage at her words.

Today, however, Mrs. Clinton has found a way to incite my anger, and i cannot remain silent.  When given the opportunity to clarify herself, an opportunity afforded to her by the national stage which she still occupies for now, Mrs. Clinton chose to blame others and then make a political statement rather than a heartfelt and full apology for her remarks.

As I write this the recommended diary list here at Kos is 80%+ filled with responses and ruminations to Senator Clinton's unfortunate and offensive choice of words in trying to equate the current Democratic campaign to that of the too soon ended run of Bobby Kennedy in 1968.  

That the remarks were ill-chosen and tone-deaf to the realities in which Barack Obama daily finds himself in America 2008 is impossible to argue. Instead of focusing on her remarks, I would like to focus on the Obama campaign's response, because to me it demonstrates one of the biggest reasons I support their work: amazing grace.

I have been waiting since about last Thursday for Hillary Clinton's campaign to trot out their tried and true, tradmarked, Pre-Primary Kitchen Sink Strategy.  Perhaps I will jinx it with this post and we will see an ad insinuating Obama visited Waziristan in August 2001, but I doubt it.  Per Ben "Objective Journalist" Smith at Politico:

In a pair of new Indiana ads, Clinton keeps the focus on gas prices and fighting for workers but drops the shots at Obama, closing on a positive economic message.

To: Interested Parties

From: The Clinton Campaign

Date: April 22, 2008

MEMO: Watch What They Do, Not What They Say

What is up with that title?  So menacing.  Oooooh!

• In light of the recent revelations regarding Mark Penn and Colombia I think an enterprising journalist might ask the question, did this paragon of free trade give the okey doke to the Canadians as well?  

CBS has an account of a particularly contentious Hillary Clinton campaign rally where she got some pretty heated questions.  It seems that she may be cracking under the pressure and the realization that she cannot win.  I'm not sure what stage of grieving we are at, maybe anger.

Apparently she doesn't take criticism seriously, which explains a lot:

Clinton went on to say that elections can be heated and a president has to be able to handle criticism. "I don’t take any of it personally," she said. "I don’t take any of it seriously. If you can’t stand the heat don’t run for president because it’s a really hot kitchen in the White House."

You cannot misspeak from prepared remarks.  This is the simple premise that i predicate my assertion that Hillary Clinton's fabrication regarding her landing in Bosnia was not a "misstatement" as she has characterized it.  It was a LIE.  Period.

Here are her PREPARED remarks from GWU on March 17, 2008:

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base. But it was a moment of great pride for me to visit our troops, not only in our main base as Tuzla, but also at two outposts where they were serving in so many capacities to deactivate and remove landmines, to hunt and seek out those who had not complied with the Dayton Accords and put down their arms, and to build relationships with the people that might lead to a peace for them and their children.

Some on Dkos have apologized for this man and said there is some validity to his latest diatribe aimed at white people.  Here is my take:

PJB: A Brief for Whitey
[Cause black people don't vote Republican anyway.]

How would he pull it off? I wondered.
[Interestingly, a whole lot better than I did this here.]

I will keep this short and sweet.  Obama made another long speech today, laying out his views on American foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here is a link to the full speech: http://my.barackobama.com/...

While this will no doubt be overshadowed by the speech made yesterday, i submit that this one is every bit as good.  Join after the jump for highlights.

Barack Obama's speech today was remarkable in its eloquence, its directness and its honesty. It was a speech that only he could give. It was a speech that laid bare his attempts to understand and reconcile his own American story.  In it he sought the trust of the American people; he hoped that they too could understand his story, and see in it a part of their own.  A More Perfect Union was, like so much of his oratory, a call to our better selves.  But this speech was unique in a way that few have commented on thus far.  Buried deep in its blunt examination of the racial tensions and misunderstandings in America was a call to arms against the true casualty of our myopic focus on race and the fortunes of one group of people vis a vis another: class.

The headline:

Racial issue bubbles up again for Democrats
Clinton, Obama have each used race, sex against the other

The story goes on for 27 paragraphs and only one of them makes any tangential reference to Obama's use of "sex" against Clinton.  The reference made is months old and is really bush league compared to Ferrarro's ad hominem insinuations that Obama is benefiting from some kind of quota system in leading the nominatng race:

Mr. Obama’s advisers suggested that Mrs. Clinton was playing the sex card last fall after a brutal debate where several male contenders criticized her.

To combat allegations of secrect and show her qualifications for office Hillary Clinton has released an official resume.  I hear the tax returns can't be far behind.

I actually have gotten my hands on an updated version of the document which highlights her support of cluster bombs and such, but i don't have time to scan it in right now.

I have posted scanned copies after the jump . . .

This just came in from the Clinton campaign.  The following is Hillary's official resume for POTUS.  Hopefully the tax returns will soon follow

I have been in a bit of a funk over the recent developments regarding NAFTA and Hillary's increasingly vitriolic campaign to elect John McCain.  Today David Brooks has decided to try and talk Obama's campaign out of going after Hillary's secrecy and duplicitousness.  I'm not buying it.  In the last several days the Clinton Campaign has overreached and overreached badly.

Expect Obama to begin hammering her today in Wyoming and for his surrogates to do the same in their ubiquitous conference calls later today.