The Obama campaign thinks it is smarter to give up two states with a cumulative 47 electoral votes, which are true battleground states, and try to win in 7 states which have increased their GOP voting margin over the past 12 years. This is a campaign relying on day-to-day polling, rather than looking at what people say compared to how they have voted in the past.

I have said it before. Ohio is THE state to win for anyone who truly wants to be President in November.

Now, let's look at the basis for Obama's strategy. Well, it's simple. He's counting on black people. He's counting on racial division to win the election. How about that?

Team Obama believes it has a shot to win Virginia and such Bible Belt states as Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, with their sizable number of black voters.

A Rasmussen Reports poll released yesterday shows Virginia a dead heat - 45 percent for Obama, 44 percent for McCain.

"That's a big story," said pollster Scott Rasmussen. "If I were in the McCain campaign, I'd be concerned."

Virginia hasn't gone for a Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide, but it has tilted in recent years, with Democrats winning the governorship and a Senate seat.

The Obama campaign has him winning 82 electoral-college votes in at least seven swing states and 200 electoral-college votes in safely Democratic states.

It also hopes to convert GOP states Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico and to retain Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, which voted Democratic in 2004.

None of these polls, upon which the Obama campaign is setting its cap, have anything to do with what people will be thinking in November. What these kinds of reports from the Obama campaign represent to me is simply this:

Hillary Clinton ran a completely incompetent campaign. The nomination was her's to lose and she managed that nicely. To lose a nomination to someone so historically illiterate and socially arrogant is truly, truly a testament to the incompetence of the Clintons.

Now, many in America will vote for Barak simply on the basis of race, as he has predicted. But the race card being played by this campaign has nothing to offer to the "what's in it for me" gene all humans are possessed of. To vote only on the basis of one's color - to campaign on the basis of one's color - exemplifies the danger of racism.

NCRI - More than three million Iraqi Shiites signed a declaration calling for eviction of the Iranian regime and its agents from Iraq and removal of restrictions imposed on the members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) residing in Ashraf City (home to the members of the PMOI in Iraq).

The following is the text of the declaration which was announced at the fourth annual session of the Solidarity Congress of the Iraqi People that was held in Ashraf and was attended by more than 1,000 representatives of 138 Iraqi parties as well as political and social associations:

To be certain, there is an attempt in Iran to create a new Persian empire. This is predicated on the nuclear ambition, meddling in Iraq, and calls for a pan-nationalist (a la 1950's) Islamic empire by the current Iranian regime.

Iraqis - and Shi'ites to boot - are rejecting this notion. The prospect of self-determination seems more powerful than subjugation. If this is not a reflection of the current success of MNF work in Iraq, I don't know what is.

Read the rest>>>

I think Obama will take Michigan and Wisconsin and McCain will take Iowa and New Mexico (but even if Obama takes all four, it still leaves him 6 votes short). So it comes down to Ohio.

Unless there is some huge upset away from the trend of the past 10 years or so, the up-for-grabs state is Ohio and this is more likely to be a Republican won state than Michigan.

There you have it - our early embrace of the electoral landscape. Enjoy.