This is a shocking development, not because the poll has changed -- it was 50-50 last week, too -- but because Obama's supporter and Clinton's supporter have changed sides, twice!  And that's just this week!

My husband significant other partner of 28 years boyfriend roommate husband was a pretty solid supporter of Hillary, as far as I knew, while I, on the inside, where it really counts, was liking Obama since his keynote address in 2004.

I must say, I tend to wear the political pants in the family and I usually give him a cheat sheet on election day and he humors me when I yell at the pundits on the TV.

But something happened, and now we've both changed our minds.

Nancy might have won a gold medal; Tanya certainly was not going to.  Bottom line -- the US went home without the gold medal. Kneecapping your teammate doesn't help your team win.

Perception is reality.  The surge will work because it will appear to work.  It will appear to work because the media wants it to work and will make it look like it worked.  After all , Geogie and Rovie have been so good to the media, they will consider it a going-away gift.  One more free pass.  Look! The Surge worked! Read on...

World News tonight had a report on the House debate on Iraq.  Let's see, do you think their report was fair & balanced? Hmm... let's see... what do you think?

So I have this credit card that I have had since... well, it was called a Bank Americard back then, before it was renamed Visa.  The issuing bank was Cleveland Trust which became AmeriTrust which became Society Bank which became Key Bank.  So I've had it a long time.  I am pretty sure that MBNA might have something to do with it now.

Like a lot of people, sometimes over the last 30 years I have carried a balance and sometimes I have paid it off in full.  Used to be when you paid in full, they didn't charge you interest.  Things have changed.  Congress changed banking laws.  I guess maybe I should have paid off my Senators instead of my credit card.  It seems to have worked well for the banks.  

But wait until you hear how "customer service" explains it on the flip...

If you lived in Cincinnati in the mid 80s, you might remember a song with the above title.  The song was about the media, especially the television media, being able to explode over sensational stories, while the important ones go unnoticed.

And George Bush probably feels good about the whole Foley thing.  I will explain why and what that has to do with nuns holding babies on the flip.

I am trying to gather up all these pieces blowing in the wind, searching tea leaves, trying to make sense of the voices I am hearing.  And I think I know Karl Rove's strategy for 2006. Attack Bush before the Democrats do.

We are seeing the first signs of the stragegy in place: Part 1, watch the Democrats sit idly by on censure, waiting for the Republicans to fall to pieces; Part 2, send in the media hacks like Chris Matthews to attack Bush and claim "I didn't know better! I was lied to!"

Part 3 and a poll below the fold...

Paul Hackett was just on "Hardball with Chris Matthews".  What did you think of it?

I am a former Hacketthead.  Partly because we feel we made a star out of Paul when we helped bring his within an inch of victory in OH-02;  partly because we are inspired by the concept of Fighting Dems; partly because we are trying to "crash the gates" of the glacially incontinent Democratic party; but mostly because we felt he had the best chance to seize a Republican-held Senate seat, we gave him our support and our money.  I can understand how my fellow Hackettheads feel like we got nothing in return.

In the never-ending Hackett diaries here at DKos, I have been preaching "keep your eye on the prize: winning the Senate seat in Ohio" and start supporting Sherrod Brown.  Many others are saying that Brown needs to "show us why we should support him."

So what does Sherrod owe us?  I think he owes me nothing.

I am a New Yorker but I have been obsessed with the Ohio diaries.  I was/am a Hackett supporter, but now that he's out of the race, I am full steam ahead for Brown.

But wait-- it has been hard to try to get party unity going here on DK.  Instead of getting better with the passage of time (four days, heck the VP could have shot someone else in that much time), the diaries are getting more and more nasty.  I didn't think we needed another diary on the story until I picked up a running theme in many of the comments today:  Schumer and Reid should have let Ohians make the decision.  Since Schumer is my Senator, I began to wonder whether I should even be having an opinion on this issue.

Then I realized: we are all Ohioans.

Remenber when the church arsons started and Chris Matthews blamed "the gays"?  Well now he's not the only one (AP):

A federal investigator said witness reports and behavioral profilers led authorities to believe that two white men were responsible for the fires. Witnesses said they saw two men in a sport utility vehicle near a number of the fires.

"They're not youths or teens. It's probably someone in their 20s or 30s. We believe they're pretty much inseparable. They're something like bosom buddies," said Eric Kehn, a spokesman for the federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency.

Once again, Karl Rove has beaten us to the punch, though I must say this one took a long time.  The White House is now referring to the NSA Domestic Spying as the Terrorism Surveillance Program.  Avenging Angel has a great post on the details here.

They had not yet been successful in completely framing the issue as 'spying on terrorists" up to now, but this new name might do it.  We must immediately fight this framing with one of our own and my nominee is Citizen Surveillance Program.

As expected, Tweety and Co. and using the news of the new bin Laden recording to try to make those of us who criticized the President for illegal wiretapping look foolish.  We need to push back against this and here's the response:

"How do we know he's only spying on terrorists"?

Two weeks ago I wrote this diary that included a letter to the editor of Newsweek:

There is only one way to assure Americans that spying is not being used for political or nefarious purposes: congressional oversight and judicial review, just as the Constitution demands.

 Did Newsweek print it?  More on the flip.

CNN has a quick poll on their homepage:

What do you think of Sen. Clinton's comment that the Bush administration is "one of the worst" in U.S. history?
On the mark/ Over the top

Did anyone else see the "Nightline" story on the abortion doctor tonight?  Did you get the impression, as I did, that Martin Bashir was preaching his own anti-abortion opinions in the piece?

Bashir sounded like a leader of Operation Rescue, asking the doctor if he knew that he was killing a life that has a beating heart and making the doctor seem like a cold-blooded killer.

More on the flipside...

It seems that many Americans are fine with Bush's spying on terrorists or those with links to terrorists. Newsweek's article assumes that Bush is using his spying only to fight terrorism. I might be fine with it, too, except there's one nagging problem... how do we know that's who he is spying on?  Because he says so? My letter to Newsweek and why the "who" should be the most important question asked right now are below the fold.

Today we travel to the Empire State to see who is stealing your money. New York Governor George Pataki, who is most likely going to try to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, is trying to steal money from the Transit Workers Union members.  Before and during the strike, he refused to participate in negotiations:

So he let the Metropolitan Transit Authority negotiate a contract, which they did.  The contract returns pension overpayments to the union members.  How does Pataki feel about it now?
Seems hypocritical to me, unless maybe he's trying to boost his pension-stealing-Social Security-ending Republican thief creds.
More Pataki hypocrisy below the fold...

It started out so innocently.  Around election time last year, I was looking for some sanity in the world.  I was vulnerable and weak after the elections and I needed some comfort.  I found it at DailyKos.  People who felt the same way I did gathered here for the same reasons I did-- a need for fraternity and sympathy.  Little did I know that I was going to become a DailyKos addict.