These book tours are so handy!

Here's from another article on Edwards' book tour:

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards isn't yet willing to commit to another run for president, but the 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president said Sunday that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama should get into the race.

"I hope he runs. I think he should run," Edwards told The Associated Press. "This is such an important job that I would urge anybody who can make a serious contribution to the campaign and the dialogue - either in our party or the other party - to run."

...

On Sunday, he was in South Carolina to promote a new book he edited on childhood homes, "Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives." While there, he touted his proposals to reform education, promote universal health care and pull troops out of Iraq.

His book tour also has stopped in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada - all key states in the presidential nominating process.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/elections/16054364.htm

Obama's been to Iowa recently as well, not to mention also having a book tour:

Iowa senator Tom Harkin stood at the podium firing up the 3,000 supporters who had paid $25 to join him at the Warren County Fairgrounds in September. The scene was the annual Harkin Steak Fry, a gathering of Hawkeye State Democrats that, with Iowa’s vital spot in the presidential elections, is always a larger stage than the pumpkin-and-hay-bale-bedecked platform it takes place on. It was Harkin’s 29th such gathering, but the day belonged to a 45-year-old freshman senator from Illinois—or as Harkin called him, “the kid next door.”

“Honestly—tell you the truth—I really tried to get Bono this weekend,” Harkin told the crowd. “I settled for the second biggest rock star in America.”

The crowd came to its feet cheering as a smiling Barack Obama rose. “What a warm reception,” Obama began. “I’m going to have to come to Iowa again.” Obama didn’t wink, but his meaning was clear. The crowd went wild.

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/mediapolitics/1836.html

I'm glad Edwards is [presumably] running. He has been my first choice for quite a while. Edwards/Obama would probably be a strong ticket.
Edwards first book was a very good read.

2004 exit polls showed that John Edwards would have beaten Richard Burr 53-47 in the North Carolina Senate race, if he had run.

Obama will not run. Put "Obama's house deal" into a search engine and its all there: Obama funny business with a now indicted (Fitzgerald indicted, no less) Chicago operator who is surely looking for a plea deal. Read the story and wonder about how Obama could have taken such a breathtaking risk with a guy who was already under federal investigation at the time. Is Obama arrogant or is he reckless? Obama as much as says that he initiated the deal, that he brought this operator, Rezko, into the deal.

I read this article, and it didn't really make any sense to me what Obama did wrong.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0611020249nov02,1,2091341.column?page=2&coll=chi-news-col

This columnist, John Kass, is not to be trusted (just look at his other columns), and neither is the Chicago Tribune, which is looking to do to Obama what hometown paper the Boston Globe did to Kerry.

Here's the Obama side of the story, for those of you interested in more than rumors and innuendo (from possible sock puppets?):

Robert Gibbs, Communications director for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)
Published November 9, 2006

Washington -- John Kass' column on the Obamas' purchase of their home ("Obama fuzzy on fence that Tony built," News, Nov. 2) reminds one of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's bits of wisdom: Everyone is free to have his or her own opinion but not to make up his or her own facts. Yet Kass makes up some facts to fit his tale, which he seems to prefer to the one reported with some care in his very own newspaper.

Kass believes that the Obamas received a "discount" on their home because they negotiated a price below the list price. Most Americans assume that a listed price is open to negotiation and that the price at which a home is sold is a fair price--the one that the seller and buyer agree to. Kass' opinion is, well, different, but it is an opinion and not a fact.

Then there is the fact that the Obamas paid more than twice the appraised value for a 10-foot strip of land from the adjacent lot.

Unhappy with this fact, Kass manufactures another: "Since (the appraised value of the strip is) one-sixth of the Rezko side, it means Rezko paid $625,000 for property that was actually worth $243,000."

But this is neither a fact nor the way that property of this kind is priced, and the story on which he relies, again in his own paper, suggests nothing of the sort.

And Kass is going quite out of his way here to criticize the Obamas for overpaying for the property.

Kass suggests that the Obamas hold the keys to the fence between the two properties when the fence is, in fact, latched, not locked, and there is no key. He suggests that the Rezkos "put up" a fence for the Obamas when, in fact, the law requires them, as the vacant lot owner, to fence their property.

I never received a call from Kass before he penned his column. If he had done so, maybe his column would have read differently.

To his credit, Kass acknowledges at the outset that he wants more generally to encourage critical coverage of the senator.

Criticism is fine; opinionated criticism is fine too. But the facts should still count for something, and Kass did not need to look further than his own paper to avoid misstating them.