Video. Reverendo afroamericano Jesse Jackson sobre Barack Obama: “Quiero cortarle las b*l*s”

Cortesía de Fox News:

Otro gran escandalo racista sobre la gran campaña presidencial del esperanzador candidato negro a la presidencia de los Estados Unidos, Barack Obama.

Jesse Jackson, perenne candidato negro a la presidencia de los Estados Unidos -antes-, comentó sobre Obama en conversación franca tras un programa de Fox News, sin saber que el micrófono estaba abierto. El uber demócrata e izquierdista Jackson dijo cosas feas de Barack Obama, candidato demócrata a la presidencia, cuya campaña ha oficialmente perdonado al reverendo Jackson incluso antes que nadie supiera que fue lo que dijo.

¿Qué dijo el reverendo Jackson? ¿Dijo las cosas que muchos/algunos dirigentes demócratas dicen fuera del aire? El blog AM no conoce la respuesta a esa pregunta. DrudgeReport dice que Jackson quiere cortarle las b*l*s a Obama -literalmente-, y que el esperanzador candidato negro a la presidencia de los Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, trata a los afroamericanos como si fueran idiotas y en el fondo los desprecia profundamente.

Sí, es un gran escándalo racista. Gran escándalo de iglesia negra. La America profunda, almas tribuladas del suroeste. Gran escándalo racista.

Pronto, por Fox News, cortesía de la gran campaña presidencial del esperanzador candidato negro a la presidencia de los Estados Unidos, Barack Obama.

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AM
tu fiel aliado racista de derechas

Re-edición: Gran Día de la Independencia.

AM. 5/7. Texarkana.- Nueva Edición. Gran Re-edición.

En un día tan especial como hoy, el blog AM toma este instante y día para regocijarse ante el recuerdo de un evento importante e inolvidable: La declaración de independencia de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. Es 4/7. Y hace 232 años: El día de la independencia de los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica.

Gran fecha patria.
Gran momento patrio.
Gran independencia.

Es el firme y profundo deseo del blog AM que todos vuestros/nuestros sueños, estimados norteamericanos, se vuelvan realidad. Más pronto que tarde.

Y que de esa forma, y no de otra, sea cumplida y consumada la historia/escritura.

El blog AM toma esta oportunidad para felicitar al pueblo norteamericano, y a la nación norteamericana, por todos los aportes y cosas positivas que han brindado a sí mismos y también a toda la raza humana, y por haber sido muchas veces la luz de un mundo en tinieblas.

El día de ayer, el blog AM celebró personalmente la fecha de independencia de EE.UU. proyectando “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” (Capra, 1939) para todos sus colaboradores, gran película en la que el señor Smith viaja a Washington y ve cosas que no le gustan, y decide que puede aferrarse a los ideales de quienes crearon y dieron pie a la gran nación norteamericana para cambiar el rumbo de su país, y al final el cabeza del congreso se ríe mientras muchos gritan. Y la gran estatua de Abraham Lincoln, sentado, esperando que alguien lea/llegue. Esperando por tí y por mí. Y dice:

“In this temple, as in the hearts of the people for whom he saved the union, the memory of Abraham Lincoln is enshrined forever.”

En este templo, así como en los corazones del pueblo por quien él salvó la unión, la memoria de Abraham Lincoln es santificada/celebrada para siempre.

Revívalo. Es 1776. Gran escrito: La declaración de independencia de los Estados Unidos de Norteamerica, una de las más impresionantes y hermosas prosas jamás escritas como independencia de nación alguna.

America.
Que las sospechas a por el fin habrán de cesar bajo luna o sol. Una vez.

America.

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AM
Fidelis
Domino

04/07: Feliz Día de la Independencia, Estados Unidos de Norteamérica

Que todos vuestros/nuestros sueños se vuelvan realidad. Más pronto que tarde.

Que de esa forma, y no de otra, sea cumplida y consumada la historia/escritura.

Revívalo. Es 1776. Gran escrito: La declaración de independencia de los Estados Unidos de Norteamerica, una de las más impresionantes y hermosas prosas jamás escritas como independencia de nación alguna.

America.
Que las sospechas a por el fin habrán de cesar bajo luna o sol. Una vez.

America.

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AM
Fidelis
Domino

Bill Clinton: Obama tendrá que besarme el c*lo si quiere mi apoyo

Lo ha dicho literalmente.

No son declaraciones públicas, sino algo que el ex presidente dijo a una fuente cercana a los Clinton. Por supuesto, este procedió a declarárselo a un periodista que publicó la historia, todo en pos de la gran unidad del partido demócrata de cara a las primeras elecciones presidenciales norteamericanas después del muy tribulado y polémico período de Bush Jr.

Y Hillary y Barack se besaron ayer en Unity.

Titular de Drudge Report (jun.27):

“YEAH, RIGHT” (Sí, claro)

CNN tituló en su ticker una frase extrañamente a prueba de parodias:
“Clinton praises Obama’s dream at unity event” (Clinton alaba el sueño de Obama en evento de unidad)
Como si lo hubieran hecho a propósito.

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AM
No lo hace a propósito

El falso Obamesías

El esperanzador candidato negro a la presidencia de los Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, señalado por los cielos para curar de una vez por todas ese país tan horrible y racista que es Estados Unidos, ha comenzado su campaña de sanación nacional y espiritual advirtiendo a todos sus fieles que quienes se le oponen son racistas y acusándolos adelantandamente de que emplearán la carta del racismo para quitarle la presidencia que él merece por providencia divina:

El candidato presidencial demócrata Barack Obama dijo el viernes que espera que los Republicanos utilicen el hecho de que él es negro como parte de una campaña para hacer que los votantes le tengan miedo.

(…)

“(Obama:) Intentarán que ustedes me tengan miedo. Es joven, inexperto, y tiene un nombre raro. ¿Y hemos mencionado que es negro?”

Sí. El otro candidato dirá estas cosas de mí para que me teman, y ni siquiera me consideren una alternativa.

Alguien, por favor, dele un espejo al señor Obama.

Al principio de la campaña, Obama resaltó por ser el primero candidato negro a la presidencia de los Estados Unidos en no utilizar la carta del racismo como parte de su campaña. Ahora, y especialmente después del escándalo del reverendo Wright, que nos obsequió a un Obama intentando explicar futilmente cómo pudo pasar 20 años de su vida apoyando a una figura que representa y aupa desde un púlpito lo peor de la America profunda e ineducada, está cada vez menos claro quien es el senador Obama y en qué realmente cree, y cada vez más claro que él no está por encima de jugar la carta del racismo cuando lo cree conveniente.

Pero claro, él es algo nuevo.

De hecho, es tan nuevo que necesita su propio sello de la presidencia de los Estados Unidos:
(Peligro: Altas dosis de arrogancia, estupidez y mal gusto)

Nuevo sello de la campaña presidencial de Obama:

Comparación (click para alargar):

“Vero possumus”: latin aprox. de “Yes we can” (Sí podemos), lema de la campaña de Obama.

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AM
yes you can
no you shouldn’t

Inundaciones en Estados Unidos. Imagenes de devastación natural.

¿Esta usted preocupado por las recientes inundaciones en el medio oeste de Estados Unidos? Se teme que el gran río Mississippi se desborde en varios puntos, lo cual daría lugar a una devastación natural sin precedentes. Y también cumpliría con el famoso presagio de Nostradamus acerca del desborde futuro del río Mississippi. ¿Sabía usted que estas inundaciones podrían tener un enorme impacto económico a nivel mundial?

Muchas gentes en pequeños pueblos norteamericanos están sufriendo por estas terribles inundaciones. El blog AM se solidariza con el pueblo norteamericano ante su pérdida.

En vivo.
Entérese de lo que ocurre, asómbrese ante el poder de la naturaleza:

Google News: Lo último sobre las inundaciones en Estados Unidos.
Google News: Situación actual del río Mississippi respecto a las impresionantes inundaciones en la América profunda.
Galería de fotos - Reuters: Fotos sobre las inundaciones en el medioeste norteamericano.
Videos. Technorati: Vídeos de la devastación por las inundaciones en Estados Unidos.

Este reportaje de la AP menciona a Mark Twain:

Small towns suffer big losses as rivers rise

OAKVILLE, Iowa - Neighbors helped neighbors push back the floodwaters seething toward tiny towns along the Mississippi River Thursday as President Bush began his first tour of the damage.
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Bush was in Europe when the flooding began, but expressed deep concern. He arrived in Cedar Rapids Thursday with FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison to begin examining the damage, and also planned to visit Iowa City.

In the state’s neighbors, Illinois and Missouri, volunteers joined sandbagging operations in the frantic effort to contain the Mississippi. Forecasters predicted near-record crests from Quincy, Ill., to Winfield, Mo.

“There’s one thing about Midwesterners,” said Don Giltner, mayor of Louisiana, Mo., a picturesque river town north of St. Louis where 40 square blocks were under water Wednesday, three days before the Mississippi’s expected crest. “We’re resilient as hell. We’re all worn out. We’ve put in a lot of long days.”

Storms and flooding across six states this month have killed 24 people, injured 148 and caused more than $1.5 billion in estimated damage in Iowa alone — a figure that’s likely to increase as river levels climb in Missouri and Illinois.

Even before the Iowa River used the town of Oakville as a shortcut to the Mississippi, there wasn’t much here: a post office, a convenience store, a tavern and a little restaurant.

The largest employer was a pork-and-grain producer called TriOak Foods. The company’s towering grain elevator was the tallest structure for miles around.

Then the floodwaters that soaked Des Moines and Iowa City began inundating the region’s small communities — most with skylines that consist only of a water tower and maybe a couple of church steeples.

As the rivers rise, these modest towns survive because neighbors look after each other, and the people reinforcing the levees are business owners, farmers and fellow church members who have lived there for years.

“My house is past help. So we’re trying to save everybody else’s,” said Bethany Frank as she helped fill sandbags in a church parking lot in Oakville. Her home on the outskirts of town was flooded up to the roof.

Federal officials predicted as many as 30 more levees could overflow this week, leaving industrial and agricultural areas vulnerable but sparing major residential centers. So far this week, 20 levees have overflowed.

At least 10 have been topped in Illinois and Missouri in recent days, including two south of tiny Gulfport, Ill., that threatened to swamp 30,000 acres of farmland near the evacuated town of Meyer, Ill.

A 280-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between Fulton, Ill., and Winfield, Mo., is expected to remain closed for at least 10 more days because of flooding. As many as 10 tows — each with as many as 15 barges — were believed stuck on the upper Mississippi River.

Residents in and around Winfield were urged to evacuate their homes after another levee breach Wednesday night.

“We are urging, my God, people to get out of homes and businesses east of Highway 79,” said Cpl. Andy Binder with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department. “Get out and get to higher ground.”

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt sent 600 members of the National Guard to the northeastern part of the state, plus 100 more to the St. Louis area to help towns farther downstream. In Illinois, 1,100 Illinois National Guard troops have been sent to help flooded communities.

“My property is right on this street. I’ve got a lot to lose,” said Tony Dye, whose home in Canton, Mo., stands beneath the levee and well below the river’s expected crest Thursday at nearly 14 feet above flood stage.

The levee protecting Canton appeared to be holding Thursday morning after floodwaters dropped dramatically overnight. Forecasters had predicted a flood stage of 27.7 feet — just below the record height — but before sunrise water levels had dropped well below the top of sandbag walls built by volunteers atop the levee.

The river at Hannibal, Mo., the hometown of Mark Twain, is expected to crest Friday at or near the 31.8-foot high-water mark of 1993 — the second so-called 500-year flood in 15 years. Parts of town are under several feet of water, though government buyouts after the 1993 flood left only a few scattered homes and businesses in the flood plain. Downtown, though, is protected by a levee built to withstand a crest of 34 feet.

Levee breaches to the north eased pressure on some levees downstream. The river level dropped more than 3 feet in Canton and more than 2 feet in Quincy, Ill., and Hannibal, Mo., on Thursday after a levee breach at Meyer, Ill.

However, the National Weather Service predicts all three towns will still see crests on Friday that are just short of record levels reached in 1993.

In Iowa, parts of downtown Burlington remained flooded Wednesday, but sandbagging efforts had stopped and officials said they were confident levees would hold. The Great River Bridge at Burlington was still closed because of high water.

In Cedar Rapids, officials allowed more people into damaged homes and businesses. Residents were being urged to conserve water because the water system had only half its normal supply.

Outside the population hubs, some fear entire communities may be lost forever, possibly wiping off the map names such as Columbus Junction, Fredonia, Palo and New Hartford.

About 70 percent of Iowa towns have populations of less than 1,000. A little more than half of those places have fewer than 500 inhabitants.

Oakville sits at the bottom of a hairpin turn the Iowa River makes on its course to the Mississippi. When it became clear the levee would fail, trucking company owners Trina and Ward Gabeline scrambled to help friends save whatever they could.

They gathered about three dozen truck trailers and dropped them off at houses so families could load them with furniture and heirlooms. Then the company retrieved them and carried the cargo to higher ground.

“We didn’t do it expecting to get paid,” Trina Gabeline said, her eyes bloodshot from crying. “We did it to help the people. Because these things that are in these trailers, that’s the only thing these people have left right now.”

Meanwhile, Gabeline’s three brothers helped shore up levees. One was filling trucks with sand, another hauled the sand to bagging stations and a third used an all-terrain vehicle to take finished sandbags to the flood walls.

The day of the flood, local excavating company owner Jon Fye braved the strong currents to rescue a grain elevator worker who became trapped at the TriOak plant. When river levels had stabilized, he went back with Gabeline to inspect the damage.

Fye steered the small boat gingerly around submerged cars and past a picturesque Victorian house where an American flag hung limply from the porch into muddy waters that reeked of diesel fuel and hog waste.

Gabeline stared at house after house flooded to the eaves and ticked off the names of the families who had lived there: “Hayes, Yotters, Kronfeldts, Beedings, Reids, Browns. There’s numerous Kuntzes and Lanzes along here.”

Fye said people in many small towns have already learned to live without comforts city folks take for granted.

“The small town suffers with no grocery stores anymore, hardly any gas stations,” said Fye, who lives in the even smaller nearby town of Sperry.

Fye said wealthier farmers should bounce back from the disaster fairly quickly. But for many friends and neighbors already living on the edge, the floods could spell doom.

“For some it’s a bad year, a terrible year,” he said as he cleared corn stalks from the propeller of his boat. “But for some, it’s the end.”

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AM
providence blinked

Tim Russert, dead at 58

Moderator of famous “Meet the press” is dead at 58.

Washington Post:

NBC’s Tim Russert Dies at 58
Host of ‘Meet the Press’ Suffers Heart Attack

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 13, 2008; 4:10 PM

Tim Russert, the Democratic operative turned NBC commentator who revolutionized Sunday morning television and infused journalism with his passion for politics, died this afternoon.

Russert suffered a heart attack while working in his office on Washington’s Nebraska Avenue. Details were not immediately available.

Russert served as NBC’s Washington bureau chief and the host of “Meet the Press,” the top-rated Sunday talk show, which had an enormous influence on politics and was marked by his aggressive style of interrogation. As a frequent commentator on the “Today” show, “NBC Nightly News” and other shows, Russert wielded such clout that when he declared that Sen. Barack Obama had wrapped up the Democratic nomination last month, his pronouncement was treated as a news event in itself.

Russert’s television career was marked by a voracious appetite for politics and a shrewd understanding of how politicians interact with the media. He also wrote a book about his father, titled “Big Russ and Me.” Last week, he moved Big Russ to a nursing facility.

Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw gave MSNBC viewers the news of Russert’s death at 3:40 p.m.

“He worked to the point of exhaustion so many weeks,” Brokaw said, adding: “This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice.”

Brokaw said Russert had just returned from a family trip to Italy with his wife, writer Maureen Orth. Their son, Luke, graduated from Boston College this spring, Brokaw said.

Russert served as host of “Meet the Press” longer than any other person and was “one of the premier political analysts and journalists of his time,” Brokaw said. He began hosting “Meet the Press” in 1991.

The Buffalo native got his start in New York politics, working for then-senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and then-governor Mario Cuomo.

Blog. Post exito en WordPress. Conversations with an unapologetic black liberal:

OMG!! I can’t believe this but MSNBC is reporting that Tim Russert, the moderator of Meet The Press, NBC News Washington Bureau Chief and a great, great journalist is dead..

I’ve always kept a list of people that I would like to meet and Tim Russert was one of them, his line of questioning of guests on his show or candidates at a debate was truly fair and balanced and this garnered my admiration and respect while his overall ’down to earth’ television persona brought many a smile to my face…I still can’t believe that he’s gone..man…

Washington D.C, the politcal world, in fact the entire world will not be the same without him, he will truly be missed…

Obama: “En el 2016 estaré terminando mi segundo mandato”

Excuse me.

CBS:

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama dropped in on the Chicago 2016 Olympics rally on Friday and declared he is confident that he will be winding up his second term in the White House when Chicago hosts the 2016 Summer Olympic Games.

Such bravado about his own future is not typical of Obama, even in private. And, in the highly scripted world of modern politics, today’s last-minute appearance was unusual. Obama had told CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery on Thursday night that he had intended to ”chill out” at home for a few days.

“It’s a good time to be in Chicago,” Barack Obama said to the cheering crowd. “The White Sox are winning. The Cubs are winning. And Chicago’s going to win the 2016 Olympics.”

“In 2016, I’ll be wrapping up my second term as president, so I can’t think of a better way than to be marching into Washington Park alongside Mayor Daley, alongside Rahm Emanuel, alongside Dick Durbin, alongside Valerie Jarrett as President of the United States, and annoucing to the world, ‘Let the games begin!’”

The remark was a contrast to Obama’s usual style of rhetoric, which tends to be charismatic, yet understated and not prone to brash predictions. But since it became clear he was going to be the Democratic presidential nominee, a shift has been detected in his demeanor.

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Houston, Houston, we have a newbie.

Video: La pequeña Hillary Clinton

The fuck is this shit.

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The fuck is this shit.

Repentino, masivo alud de superdelegados: Obama alcanza suficientes delegados para asegurar la nominación presidencial demócrata

Decenas de superdelegados acudieron esta tarde en apoyo a Obama, logrando que este alcance el número mágico para asegurar la nominación demócrata.

Y es que de verdad querían los demócratas que Hillary Clinton concediera la victoria esta noche. Fuentes indican que concederá la victoria y todos sus delegados también.

Como AM lo predijera en los primeros días de enero, al parecer ahora sí puede escribirse el comentario que leerán en todas partes: Barack Obama es el primer candidato presidencial negro por uno de los grandes partidos norteamericanos.

Consumado est.

AP/Washington Post:

The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 3, 2008; 5:23 PM

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, becoming the first black candidate to lead a major party into a campaign for the White House. Vanquished rival Hillary Rodham Clinton swiftly signaled an interest in joining the ticket as his running mate.

Obama arranged a victory celebration in St. Paul, Minn., at the site of this summer’s Republican National Convention _ an in-your-face gesture to Sen. John McCain, who will be his opponent in the race to become the nation’s 44th president.

The 46-year-old Obama outlasted Clinton in a historic campaign that sparked record turnouts in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.

In a campaign of surprises, Clinton’s comments about joining the ticket rated high.

According to one participant in an afternoon conference call among Clinton and members of the New York congressional delegation, Rep. Nydia Velazquez said she believed the best way for Obama to win over Hispanics and members of other key voting blocs would be to take the former first lady as his running mate.

“I am open to it,” Clinton replied, if it would help the party’s prospects in November, said the participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was a private matter.

Obama sealed his victory based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and delegates’ public declarations as well as support from 22 delegates and “superdelegates” who privately confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination.

Clinton stood ready to concede that her rival had amassed the delegates needed to triumph, according to officials in her campaign. They stressed that the New York senator did not intend to suspend or end her candidacy in a speech Tuesday night in New York. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to divulge her plans.

Obama’s triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy _ all harnessed to his own innate gifts as a campaigner.

With her husband’s two-White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready, she said, to take over on Day One.

But after a year on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became something of an overnight political phenomenon.

“We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come,” he said that night in Des Moines.

A video produced by Will I. Am and built around Obama’s “Yes, we can” rallying cry quickly went viral. It drew its one millionth hit within a few days of being posted.

As the strongest female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama’s were bigger still. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his nose on stage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out in Portland, Ore., the weekend before the state’s May 20 primary.

The former first lady countered Obama’s Iowa victory with an upset five days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a campaign marathon as competitive as any in the last generation.

“Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice,” she told supporters who had saved her candidacy from an early demise.

In defeat, Obama’s aides concluded they had committed a cardinal sin of New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in favor of speeches to large audiences inviting them to ratify Iowa’s choice.

It was not a mistake they made again _ which helped explain Obama’s later outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball hoops and American Legion halls in the heartland.

Clinton conceded nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of Crown Royal whiskey at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her grandfather had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to emphasize her support for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

As other rivals quickly fell away in winter, the strongest black candidate in history and the strongest female White House contender traded victories on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 5 series of primaries and caucuses across 21 states and American Samoa that once seemed likely to settle the nomination.

But Clinton had a problem that Obama exploited, and he scored a coup she could not answer.

Pressed for cash, the former first lady ran noncompetitive campaigns in several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her rival to run up his delegate totals.

At the same time, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., endorsed the young senator in terms that summoned memories of his slain brothers while seeking to turn the page on the Clinton era.

In a reference that likened former President Clinton to Harry Truman: “There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party.”

Merely by surviving Super Tuesday, Obama exceeded expectations.

But he did more than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates that he never relinquished, and proceeded to run off a string of 11 straight victories.

Clinton saved her candidacy once more with primary victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, beginning a stretch in which she won primaries in six of the final nine states on the calendar, as well as in Puerto Rico.

It was a strong run, providing glimpses of what might have been for the one-time front-runner.

But by then Obama was well on his way to victory, Clinton and her allies stressed the popular vote instead of delegates. Yet he seemed to emerge from each loss with residual strength.

Obama’s bigger-than-expected victory in North Carolina on May 6 offset his narrow defeat in Indiana the same day. Four days later, he overtook Clinton’s lead among superdelegates, the party leaders she had hoped would award her the nomination on the basis of a strong showing in swing states.

Obama lost West Virginia by a whopping 67 percent to 26 percent on May 13. Yet he won an endorsement the following day from former presidential rival and one-time North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Clinton administered another drubbing in Kentucky a week later. This time, Obama countered with a victory in Oregon, and turned up that night in Iowa to say he had won a majority of all the delegates available in 56 primaries and caucuses on the calendar.

There were moments of anger, notably in a finger-wagging debate in South Carolina on Jan. 21.

Obama told the former first lady he was helping unemployed workers on the streets of Chicago when “you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.”

Moments later, Clinton said that she was fighting against misguided Republican policies “when you were practicing law and representing your contributor … in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.”

And Bill Clinton was a constant presence and an occasional irritant for Obama. The former president angered several black politicians when he seemed to diminish Obama’s South Carolina triumph by noting that Jesse Jackson had also won the state.

Obama’s frustration showed at the Jan. 21 debate, when he accused the former president in absentia of uttering a series of distortions.

“I’m here. He’s not,” the former first lady snapped.

“Well, I can’t tell who I’m running against sometimes,” Obama countered.

There were relatively few policy differences. Clinton accused Obama of backing a health care plan that would leave millions out, and the two clashed repeatedly over trade.

Yet race, religion, region and gender became political fault lines as the two campaigned from coast to coast.

Along the way, Obama showed an ability to weather the inevitable controversies, most notably one caused by the incendiary rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

At first, Obama said he could not break with his longtime spiritual adviser. Then, when Wright spoke out anew, Obama reversed course and denounced him strongly.

Clinton struggled with self-inflicted wounds. Most prominently, she claimed to have come under sniper fire as first lady more than a decade earlier while paying a visit to Bosnia.

Instead, videotapes showed her receiving a gift of flowers from a young girl who greeted her plane.

___

Associated Press Writers Nedra Pickler, Beth Fouhy and Devlin Barrett in Washington, Stephen Majors in Columbus, Ohio, Jim Davenport in Columbia, S.C., and Libby Quaid in Memphis, Tenn. contributed to this story