Can we begin with Hillary's incredible trading in the 90's where she managed, with no prior experience, to beat billions to one odds and turn a thousand or so into $100,000?

Sorry, that was a mistype. The conduct obviously did not take place in the 90's. It was the late 70's, I believe.

Force us to look up the details, John Smith! It was in 1978 & 1979.

"Hillary Rodham Clinton was allowed to order 10 cattle futures contracts, normally a $12,000 investment, in her first commodity trade in 1978 although she had only $1,000 in her account at the time, according to trade records the White House released yesterday.

The computerized records of her trades, which the White House obtained from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, show for the first time how she was able to turn her initial investment into $6,300 overnight. In about 10 months of trading, she made nearly $100,000, relying heavily on advice from her friend James B. Blair, an experienced futures trader."

The fact that Hillary, as the Governor's wife, made $99,000 in one year through Blair, who was the attorney for Tyson Foods, one of the biggest corporations in the state who might want her husband to let up on a few regulations, surely was irrelevant and coincidental. As was the fact that she did not have to meet a margin call while she held the futures.

So if you're looking at this like it was a bribe, mister, well, clearly you're just leaping to unwarranted conclusions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whitewater/stories/wwtr940527.htm

Of course, this is a BIG win for Obama. The win in South Carolina certainly wasn't a surprise, but the margin of victory definitely was (to the polls again, too).

Remember, this is all about expectations, and Obama clearly met and exceeded them. I'm very pleased that Obama won tonight, as it ensures a very competitive and divisive Democrat primary race until at least Super Tuesday. Of course, there's also the question of what does John Edwards do now that he's badly lost his home state.

Look for Clinton, Inc. to try to turn the Obama lemonade back into a lemon, by trying to explain away the results in S.C. as something of a fluke caused by a large minority population voting solely because of the candidates racial background (I'm certainly not agreeing with this assessment, but I think that's exactly what they'll try to do ... if they haven't started already). They have a way of turning perceived strengths into weaknesses.

Considering that Obama only won 24% of the S.C. white vote in a Democrat primary, I think the Clinton's will focus on the "electability" issue with the majority voting population in other states (white voters), even if they aren't crass enough to say it outright (though with them, you never know). Although the following comparison is lacking on a number of levels, they're going to try to pigeonhole Obama as a reincarnation of Jesse Jackson. Gosh, golly gee, they're already doing it:

Bubba: Obama Is Just Like Jesse Jackson
January 26, 2008 8:18 PM

Said Bill Clinton today in Columbia, SC: "Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here."

This was in response to a question about Obama saying it "took two people to beat him." Jackson had not been mentioned.

Boy, I can't understand why anyone would think the Clintons are running a race-baiting campaign to paint Obama as "the black candidate."

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
By PEGGY NOONAN
January 25, 2008; Page W14
www.wsj.com

We begin, as one always must now, again, with Bill Clinton. The past week he has traveled South Carolina, leaving discord in his wake. Barack Obama, that "fairytale," is low, sneaky. "He put out a hit job on me." The press is cruelly carrying Mr. Obama's counter-jabs. "You live for it."

In Dillon, S.C., according to the Associated Press, on Thursday Mr. Clinton "predicted that many voters will be guided mainly by gender and race loyalties" and suggested his wife may lose Saturday's primary because black voters will side with Mr. Obama. Who is raising race as an issue? Bill Clinton knows. It's the press, and Mr. Obama. "Shame on you," Mr. Clinton said to a CNN reporter. The same day the Web site believed to be the backdoor of the Clinton war room unveiled a new name for the senator from Illinois: "Sticky Fingers Obama."

Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red-faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment. It is also an education, and there is something heartening in this.

There are many serious and thoughtful liberals and Democrats who support Mr. Obama and John Edwards, and who are seeing Mr. Clinton in a new way and saying so. Here is William Greider in The Nation, the venerable left-liberal magazine. The Clintons are "high minded" on the surface but "smarmily duplicitous underneath, meanwhile jabbing hard at the groin area. They are a slippery pair and come as a package. The nation is at fair risk of getting them back in the White House for four years."

That, again, is from one of the premier liberal journals in the United States. It is exactly what conservatives have been saying for a decade. This may mark a certain coming together of the thoughtful on both sides. The Clintons, uniters at last.

Mr. Obama takes the pummeling and preaches the high road. It's all windup with him, like a great pitcher more comfortable preparing to throw than throwing. Something in him resists aggression. He tends to be indirect in his language, feinting, only suggestive. I used to think he was being careful not to tear the party apart, and endanger his own future.

But the Clintons are tearing the party apart. It will not be the same after this. It will not be the same after its most famous leader, and probable ultimate victor, treated a proud and accomplished black man who is a U.S. senator as if he were nothing, a mere impediment to their plans. And to do it in a way that signals, to his supporters, How dare you have the temerity, the ingratitude, after all we've done for you?

Watch for the GOP to attempt swoop in after the November elections and make profit of the wreckage.

* * *

How about how her brother Tony Rodham sold pardons to dope dealers and embezzlers and she "didn't know about it"?

Hillary needs to tell her husband to STFU. Or give him a free pass to chase bimbos - Bill's campaigning is more harmful to her than "bimbo eruptions."
Since the GOP field's attack lines, direct mailings, strategy, etc. are built around a Hillary nomination, the remaining Republicans may be her most trustworthy allies right now - an Obama nomination would be the biggest threat to them.