Daily Babe News

From celebritybabyscoop.com; Angelina Jolie enjoyed spending some time with her children while taking a break from the set of her latest film on Wednesday (March 24).

Knox, 1 ½, and big sister Shiloh, 3 ½, both munched on some snacks while taking in the view off the balcony with their beautiful mother.

Angie and her family - including Brad Pitt and their children, Maddox, 8, Pax, 6, Zahara, 5, and Knox’s twin sister Vivienne, 1 ½ - have been in Europe since last month while the mom-of-6 films The Tourist, alongside Johnny Depp.

From Wall Street Journal; Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes. [read more]

From FOX News; Al Franken's campaign says it expects the reconciliation of withdrawn challenges next week to result in a 35-50 vote lead for Franken in the Minnesota Senate race.

"The work left for the state canvassing board to do next week - the re-allocation of withdrawn challenges - is work we have already done in our internal count, because that count has always assumed that all challenges will fail," Franken's campaign attorney Marc Elias said at a press conference Saturday. "On Tuesday, I will stand before you with that work completed. Al Franken will have a lead of between 35 and 50 votes. And, at some point not too long after that, Al Franken will stand before you as the Senator-Elect from Minnesota."

The Franken campaign's internal count before the state canvassing board began its work of reviewing challenges was based on the assumption that all challenges would fail. [read more]

From The Politico; Nov. 4, 2008, was the day when American politics shifted on its axis.

The ascent of an African-American to the presidency — a victory by a 47-year-old man who was born when segregation was still the law of the land across much of this nation — is a moment so powerful and so obvious that its symbolism needs no commentary.

But it was the reality of power, not the symbolism, that changed Tuesday night in ways more profound than meet the eye.

The rout of the Republican Party, and the accompanying gains by Democrats in Congress, mean that Barack Obama will assume office with vastly more influence in the nation’s capital than most of his recent predecessors have wielded.

The only exceptions suggest the magnitude of the moment. Power flowed in unprecedented ways to George W. Bush in the year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It flowed likewise to Lyndon B. Johnson after his landslide in 1964.

Beyond those fleeting moments, every president for more than two generations has confronted divided government or hobbling internal divisions within his own party. [read more]

From FOX News; Neil Cavuto can't get Bob Menendex (D-NJ) to admit that Obama's 40% top marginal tax rate is higher than Reagan's 28%.

From YouTube;

From Victor Davis Hanson in the Fresno Bee; Lame-duck Republican President Bush's dismal poll ratings have descended to those of Harry Truman's when he left office. The Democratic majority in Congress will probably widen after the election.

Republican nominee John McCain has not run a dynamic campaign. Gen. Colin Powell, George Bush's former secretary of state, has now enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama.

The country is in two unpopular wars -- amid the worst financial panic of the past 80 years. Not since prophet of change and newcomer Jimmy Carter ran against Gerald Ford (post Watergate and the lost Vietnam war) have voters been so eager for a shake-up.

Why then is the charismatic Barack Obama not quite yet a shoo-in?

Easy. Voters apparently still don't know who Obama is, or what he wants to do -- and so are still not altogether sure that Obama is the proper antidote to George Bush. After more than a year of campaigning, he still remains an enigma. [read more]

From Michelle Malkin; The blogosphere is buzzing about this video posted on YouTube Sunday night. It’s Barack Obama musing about how best to redistribute wealth in America in a Chicago Public Radio interview in 2001.

Not whether, but how: Through the courts or through legislation?

A caller asks The One to explain how he would do “reparative economic work.” Obama gives the legislative route two thumbs up as his preferred method of “breaking free of the constraints” placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution and then burbles about cobbling together the “actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.”

Joe The Plumber, you barely scratched the surface. [read more]

From The Hill; Illinois political insiders say Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who defended Barack Obama after his father famously threatened to castrate him, is the favorite to replace the Democratic nominee in the Senate.

Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) scolded his father, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, publicly after his comments were caught unexpectedly on tape before an interview with Fox News this summer.

But Jackson Jr.’s path is by no means assured. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) also wants to replace Sen. Obama (Ill.) in the upper chamber if he is elected president.

This gives Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who must choose between an African-American political scion and a close ally of the labor movement, a difficult decision.

Jackson has made plain that he would like to succeed Obama in the Senate. [read more]

From National Review; Across the electric wires, the hum is ceaseless: Give it up, loser. Don’t go down with the ship when it’s swept away by the Obama tsunami. According to newspaper reports, polls show that most people believe newspaper reports claiming that most people believe polls showing that most people have read newspaper reports agreeing that polls show he’s going to win.

In the words of Publishers’ Clearing House, he may already have won! The battleground states have all turned blue, the reddest of red states are rapidly purpling. Don’t you know, little fool? You never can win. Use your mentality, wake up to reality. Why be the last right-wing pundit to sign up with Small-Government Conservatives For The Liberal Supermajority? We still need pages for the coronation, and there’s a pair of velvet knickerbockers with your name on it.

Yes, technically, this is still a two-party state, but one of the parties is like Elton John’s post-Oscar bash and the other is a church social in Wasilla. As David Sedaris put it in The New Yorker:

I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of s—t with bits of broken glass in it?"

"To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

Well, to be honest, I’ve never much cared for chicken. [read more]

From Howard Stern; Howard Stern's man on the street asks local New Yorkers about why they support Obama.

From ABC News; "I cant imagine a more beautiful setting for us to be thinking about the last 13 days," said Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., this evening in Northern Virginia. "I've been traveling across this great state of Virginia for months. I've met folks everywhere I go. I haven't seen a real Virginia and a fake Virginia, I've just seen Virginia," he said, in a dig at the comments of Nancy Pfotenhauer, an adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who said Southern Virginia, where McCain is stronger, is the "real Virginia," as opposed to Northern Virginia, a Democratic stronghold.

"If you'll stand with me, then I know that we can win Virginia and we can win this election and we can finally bring the change we need to Washington," Obama told the estimated crowd of 35,000. "I feel like we got a righteous wind at our backs here."

From Christian Science Monitor; Yesterday, the Delaware Senator guaranteed an international crisis if the Obama-Biden ticket is elected.

“Mark my words: It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,” Biden told the crowd. “The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Watch, we’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

“He’s going to have to make some really tough - I don’t know what the decision’s going to be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it’s going to happen,” he said. [read more]

From The Politico; While John McCain’s past battles with skin cancer has received a great deal of scrutiny, Joe Biden’s near-fatal aneurysms in 1988 have yet to come under the spotlight.

Soon after ending his first presidential bid that year, Biden, who had been suffering from what he thought were headaches and a pinched nerve, collapsed in a hotel room shortly after giving a speech on foreign policy.

In his book "Promises to Keep," Biden says that he was unconscious for over four hours before he woke up in a hospital in Wilmington, Del. The senator was told that an artery was leaking blood into his brain and he was given his last rites by a priest. He was transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center where it was discovered that he had a second aneurysm on the other side of his brain.

Biden immediately underwent a four-and-a-half-hour operation to remove the leaking aneurysm. He had a second surgery in May to repair the other aneurysm and fully recovered after taking a seven-month leave from his seat as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. [read more]

From National Review; You can draw plenty of rational inferences from Stanley's rich work. But for a clear statement of Ayers's frightening vision, I submit that his November 2006 speech at the World Education Forum should be required reading.

As Cornerites know, I've been arguing that our emphasis on Ayers's prior terrorism, while highly relevant, is not the essential point. The real issue is Ayers's revolutionary leftism (at around the time Ayers and Obama began working on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, by the way, Ayers described himself as "a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist”).

Obama is clearly lying when he claims ignorance about Ayers's terrorism, but even if you wanted to pretend otherwise, it is impossible that he was in the dark about Ayers's revolutionary leftism: Ayers has never made a secret of it and can't seem to help himself from mentioning it about every 30 seconds. Obama not only knew about Ayers's views in this regard; he obviously subscribed to them: was a member of the Chicago New Party begun by the Democratic Socialists of America; he worked closely with Ayers on "education reform" for years, he approved of Ayers's similarly fringe-Left views of the criminal justice system's treatment of juvenile crime, and, we are learning; and he was tightly aligned with ACORN, which he and Ayers funded and whose practices fit comfortably with the Ayers view of "participatory democracy"). [read more]

From Advance Indiana; Paul Ogden blogs about the latest voter registration numbers for Marion County. Based upon a reported number of registered voters for this election, 677,401, Ogden concludes there are more registered voters in Marion County than the actual number of people of voting age. Ogden writes:

According to STATSIndiana, In 2007, Indianapolis/Marion County had an estimated population of 876,804. Of that number 232,607 were below 18 years of age, for a total of 644,197 people in Marion County/Indianapolis over 18 and thus eligible to vote. (Indiana allows felons to vote as long as they are not incarcerated).

So we have 644,197 people eligible to be registered in Marion County/Indianapolis, and 677,401 people registered. Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered!

[read more]

From The Politico; Three weeks of historic economic upheaval has done more than just tilt a handful of once-reliably Republican states in Barack Obama’s direction. Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory.

Four large states McCain once seemed well-positioned to win — Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida — have in recent weeks shifted toward Obama. If Obama were to win those four states — a scenario that would represent a remarkable turn of events — he would likely surpass 350 electoral votes.

Under almost any feasible scenario, McCain cannot win the presidency if he loses any of those four states. And if Obama actually captured all four states, it would almost certainly signal a strong electoral tide that would likely sweep the Southwestern swing states — Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada — not to mention battlegrounds from New Hampshire to Iowa to Missouri. [read more]

From Daily Mail; The internet is buzzing today with the rumour that Barack Obama's gaffe-prone running mate Joe Biden will drop out of the race for health reasons - to be replaced by Hillary Clinton.

John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate has created so much interest in the Republicans that Mr Obama will have to make a radical move to regain momentum, the argument goes.

Mrs Clinton could be just the key. Mr Biden, who had surgery in 1998 to repair two brain aneurysms, would drop out after the vice presidential debates due to be held on October 2, according to the claims - leaving the way open for the former First Lady. [read more]

From Right Pundits; Apparently, the latest attack on Vice Presidential Candidate, Governor Sarah Palin has been the hacking of her personal Yahoo email account. It has been reported that some of the contents have been posted on the internet.

It seems that troublemaking internet grifters known only as “Anonymous” have taken credit for the hacking. Screenshots of e-mail messages and photos belonging to Governor Palin have been published by WikiLeaks. That site is down at this posting.

The cache of stolen data posted by Wikileaks contained a list of Palin’s e-mail contacts, two photos of her children and screenshots from Governor Palin’s account, including the text of an e-mail exchange with Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell about his campaign for Congress. [read more]

From Politico; The McCain campaign quickly posted a mischievous video charging that the "lipstick on a pig" quote by Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was a sexist reference to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The spot is not a paid ad but a Web video, which campaigns produce cheaply and then encourage their supporters to distribute. The campaigns also hope the videos will get free airing in TV news coverage. Such videos are also a way to float arguments that might not pass the greater scrutiny that comes with a statement out of a candidate's mouth, or an ad airing on broadcast television.

"READY TO LEAD? NO," says the lettering at the close of the ad. "READY TO SMEAR? YES."

The Obama campaign denies he was talking about Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) running mate, but the McCain-Palin campaign quickly called for an apology. On Tuesday evening, Obama had said in Lebanon, Va.: "Now, you know, ... you can put, uh, lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig." [read more]