Today starts the Purim cycle – I say “start” because the holiday doesn’t begin until Thursday after sunset but today – AH! Today is the Purim carnival at our synagogue. A parents’ craziness to behold. The kids – they have a great time or cry or both – it’s loud and bright and full of food and cheap prizes. And costumes – how can we forget the costumes! But this year, as some of you may know, my youngest child has been sick for the last...

You can see who I would be here. Since I don’t know a lot about military history, I’m not sure what this really means (I’ll be googling to learn after I post this). I like the Nobel Peace Prize win though. Who are you? Hattip to Reasoned Audacity. Update: Wow – I know it’s only Wikipedia, but it puts me to shame for not knowing all this – I like the comparison to Teddy Roosevelt, from the sound of this: In 1901, as Vice President, the 42 year-old Roosevelt succeeded...

You know, people say they are stunned, shocked. On and on. A close personal friend of mine who is a lawyer in NYC responded to an e-mail I wrote asking for an opinion on Eliot Spitzer’s alleged dalliances like this, “A topic better discussed off-line.” No doubt. No doubt. How many times do I have to write about how “rising star” is the kiss of death? About how expectations outgrow human nature, as does our fantastical desire for there to be a mortal we can call perfect? The...

Here’s a snowy evening’s twofer with footage of what the day, the polling location and the ballot looked like: And details on how the most reliable demographic of voters – senior citizens – exercises its right to vote (a bonus at the end is the staffer revealing who she will vote for and why):

Listen here if you’re interested in knowing what the BBC wanted to know about how I feel and how I feel about the Samantha Power incident. From a clinical perspective, the fact that Ms. Power was unable to filter out intense negative comments about Hillary Clinton and her campaign during an on-the-record interview while on a book tour indicates that Ms. Power may be the one who is obsessed with Ohio, rather than, as she says, Ohio being obsessed (about what, we’re not quite sure but some...

From the TimesOnline (UK): In an extraordinary development in New York, an emergency session of the United Nations failed to agree on a condemnation of the killings, the first major attack in Jerusalem in four years. Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, Britain, France, the European Union, Canada, Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, condemned the strike, while President Bush assured Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, of full US support. But any hope of an agreement was lost...

From WebMD: The House passed a broad bill guaranteeing better mental health coverage for people with private insurance Wednesday, handing a victory to patient and medical groups that championed the bill. … Many mental health patient groups and medical societies have long fought for the bill. Congress has tried and failed to pass similar legislation for more than a decade. Some groups, including the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, backed the Senate version, saying it was more likely...

Senior citizens who live in residential care facilities face several hurdles to voting. But my oldest child volunteers at a lodge-like apartment building called Wiggins Place in Beachwood, Ohio every week and works with the tenants on the computers (he’s been doing this since June or July). They love him there and indulged me today. Great thank you out to Dr. Herman C. Weinberg for letting me interview him this afternoon. Please, watch, listen and learn.

You will not like what you are about to read but be prepared to hear a lot more stories like this one. Then my wife finished [voting], and I got to go up to the table. I gave my name and they asked for my ID. I gave it to them, and the woman with the book frowned and asked if I had something with my Bexley address. I replied that I didn’t need anything with my valid Bexley address, as they had the correct address in the book, and I had a valid Ohio Driver’s License. She insisted that...

Listen to an Ohio voter describe how she feels about the Cuyahoga County (Ohio) switch from electronic voting to optical scan, who she voted for, why and what almost changed her vote. I urge you to watch the entire video of this Ohio voter who had just exited the polls. Disclosures that really don’t matter but might interest you: I know this woman from my town here in Ohio – she lives a couple of blocks away. Her husband is on the school board and they have a couple of kids though...

I could point you to more bandwidth and pulp that contains information you should know as you monitor headlines and the Internet over the next three days for any and all news related to the Democratic presidential primary competition between Senator Hillary Clinton (NY) and Barack Obama (IL) than you would ever be able to consume, but what will any of that tell you that you can’t already figure out if you’re enough of a wonk or wonkabee that you’re reading this blog post or this...

From the Ohio Poll (it’s a PDF) (dates taken: 2/28/-3/2): Clinton 51% Obama 42 Edwards 6 ME: 3.9% Republican: McCain 53% Huckabee 24% ME: 5.4% I sense Clinton will pull it out in Ohio but it’s hard to say. The most disturbing thing I’m seeing in the Ohio blogs is a mini-blog swarm about how Clinton is paying people $10/hour to get out there for her, when I know for a fact that ACORN is paying people very well to do the exact same of Obama – I’ve even emailed the bloggers...

I just received a very distressed phone call from someone running errands this morning in NE Ohio. His first words were, “Someone is making a lot of money.” He went on to say that, It’s one political ad after another on the radio – even 107! Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones hawking this one, Barack Obama telling us about hope in the other one – it’s insane and it’s not even Tuesday yet! I received four or five phone calls yesterday, and Friday night,...

The Trail says that, “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has disappeared from the campaign trail, and her campaign plane, with no explanation. Clinton did not show up for this afternoon’s flight from Dallas to Columbus, Ohio, and campaign spokesman Doug Hattaway would not elaborate on the reason or her whereabouts.” Hmmm. Any ideas? Check out the comments at that thread – some interesting suggestions. From the article itself: “It’s nothing bad,” Hattaway said...

So writes Nancy Nall. The plagiarism involves Tim Goeglein lifting the work of Jeffrey Hart. Nall’s conclusion says it all: I mentioned at the top of this post that I feel bad about what I’m going to do here. (I stole that line, by the way; it’s Nora Ephron’s opening for her devastating profile of Dorothy Schiff’s New York Post. Now that I’ve given credit, it’s not plagiarism, it’s an homage. See how it works?) I feel bad because my old buddy Leo Morris, who edits the op-ed pages,...

Ohio Daily Blog has the live webcast here of the Fighting Foreclosure and Abandonment Forum in Cleveland today. Fred Hochberg will be attending for Senator Hillary Clinton and Mark Alexander will be attending for Senator Barack Obama. If you haven’t been able to look, haven’t seen enough or still feel that you don’t know who this issue affect, I urge you to view this graphic pictorial of what’s happening in Cleveland. You can also view it here with a chat component if you...

The Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati has been conducting the Ohio Poll since 1981. Today’s press release, not even 12 hours after the final Clinton-Obama debate before Ohio’s primary on March 4, shows that the race in November will be close, regardless of the nominees. You can read the pdf here. FYI as you read from the release: A random sample of 1049 registered voters from throughout the state was interviewed by telephone. In 95 of 100 cases, the statewide...

They are all here – David Axelrod, David Wilhelm. Jesse Jackson, Ted Strickland. Andrea Mitchell, Candy Crowley. On and on. I’ve got lots of video and pictures that I feel confident no one else got – particularly the video. But what I’m also certain you won’t hear is anything that isn’t spin. You can hear it as you walk from cluster to cluster, how each politician or strategist’s candidate did. It’s all “we’re winning” –...

The Cleveland audience is listening intently but the atmosphere in the auditorium is somber. Brian Williams and Tim Russert play a game of good cop/bad cop. Sitting behind me: a college student who studies photography, got her ticket through the lottery and hadn’t thought about the election until she heard about the debate. She is undecided but wants to hear about health care because her father lost his job in August and will be a senior in a few years. Sitting in front of me: an African-American...

I’m here in the media filing center. The Ohio Democratic Party top dogs have given an overview that I didn’t really hear because I was busy figuring out where I am, uploading photos and saying hello to other press. There is supposedly going to be over 500 press here. In Ohio, it’s 3:30pm EST. I will be blogging through until about 7:30 or so, when I have to go into the audience – I won a ticket to the debate through a lottery, as well as was awarded credentials. MANY bloggers...

KXAN in Austin, TX has commissioned two polls related to the Austin debate this evening. Read more here. The results of the first poll, pre-debate, look like this: If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Democrats: Clinton 46% Obama 45% Undecided 9% Margin of error: +/- 4% If the election were held today, who would you vote for? Republicans: Huckabee 30% McCain 52% Paul 9% Undecided 9% Margin of error: +/- 4% Voter interest...

Did you see it last night? If you missed it, feel free to take a look at my Flickr set. Here’s one example – it was a beautiful, eerie sky.

And no one is even trying anymore to show them the boundaries. It all ends up being about who is more objectively offensive and who should apologize to whom. When the issue is: they’re all wrong in their fast and loose use of language. Absolutely wrong. These folks are supposed to be our best journalists who get these hours to themselves because of their skill and ability. Instead, they get out there and work to get attention, pure and simple. Sometimes they have to say they are sorry,...

That’s how the Rand Corporation is describing the large-scale intervention we’ve gotten ourselves into in their most recent study. This is from the Rand Corp., which, I am pretty sure, is supposed to skew conservative. From the press release: Recognizing that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be the last of their kind, a new RAND Corporation study issued today finds that U.S. capabilities to meet the threat of Islamist insurgencies are seriously deficient and out of balance. The...

The e-mails, phone calls – robo and live, invites and blogs are buzzing through every inch of available space, cyber and otherwise, in Ohio right now. In the last two hours alone I’ve received information about Barack Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Jewish community in Northeast Ohio, I was called by a live (as opposed to recorded) Hillary Clinton supporter about attending a rally tomorrow at a local high school and I’m gathering information for a fellow blogger coming...