All Da King's Men:

Now, the merits of NAFTA are definitely a subject for debate, and maybe I'm not a smart Ivy league grad like Mr. Obama, but I'm pretty sure about one thing. NAFTA, a free trade agreement between Canada, the USA, and Mexico, isn't responsible for any jobs being shipped overseas. Those 3 countries are all part of the same land mass, North America, and there are no seas between them. I learned a little something in 5th grade geography class, in between passing notes to my puppy love Wendy.

Obama also voted to expand NAFTA into Peru, a move not supported by the AFL-CIO, and a pretty bizarre move for someone who claims he was always against NAFTA.

And there's the rub. Obama WASN'T always against NAFTA, unless by "always" he means "always since I set foot in Ohio in 2008 needing to be against it to win Ohio and secure the Democratic presidential nomination". Maybe it's like Bill Clinton's definition of the word "is", you know, malleable.

Read the full post.

Buckeye State Blog:

Cunningham with Hannity. Pure, total, trainwreck hilarity. Cunningham sure has a face for radio. Are all these conservative radio guys pasty white old men who crawled out from under a rock?

Digby on the debate:

The problem is Tim Russert and all his petty, shallow acolytes who spend all their time reading Drudge and breathlessly reporting every tabloid tidbit and sexy rumor and seeking out minor inconsistencies from years past in lieu of doing any real work.

Full post.

ProgressOhio:

America is finally treated to a real debate, not a tightly controlled format that does not allow any back and forth.

The real loser: Tim Russert.

Callahan’s Cleveland Diary:

Well, who woulda guessed it. It seems there’s no mortgage meltdown or housing market crisis, Ohio’s economic problems are all rooted in NAFTA, and Clinton, Obama, Williams and especially Russert all miraculously reached the Wolstein Center without passing through a Cleveland neighborhood. Luckily they had Minister Farrakhan and that guy who’s running for Putin’s job to talk about.

The word “foreclosure” was used once the whole night, in passing (by Obama).

Read the full post.

Ohio Daily Blog finds the part of the debate that sums up all that's wrong with her campaign.

From Oden's Blog:

Today I got a phone call from Senator Barack Obama. I was so nervous two days ago when I knew it was gonna happen and wanted to make sure he knew I had done my homework on him. I have a lot of respect for him and already had a really good feeling about him. As the time got closer, I got on his website, learned more about what he is about and brushed up on what I knew, so I got more comfortable with the idea of speaking to him one on one.

The conversation was quick - like two minutes but I got to talk to him like a real person. What I got from talking to him is that he is a real sports fan and he knew about the Blazers. He said that when I come back Brandon, LaMarcus and I will be a force next year. He also asked me about my knee, and he said he wasn't feeling my mohawk - lol. I laughed and explained to him that it's just a haircut to me and he told me he liked how I handle myself as a young man - "Thanks Mom." I did not talk politics with him. He talks about that stuff all the time and I'm going to keep learning more about the issues.

He is a very nice man and I am a big fan. I got the chance to go to his website (www.barackobama.com) and read up on some of his beliefs and there are things he is doing that I really support like his plan with education, civil rights, and health care. That's why Senator Obama is getting my vote.

Read the full post

The fight for the affections of Tim Ryan are in full swing. Now that Dodd is endorsing Obama how will undeclared superdelegate Tim Ryan vote?

From the Politico:

Ryan, who represents a Northeastern Ohio district stretching from Youngstown to Akron, endorsed Chris Dodd last fall, but has since stayed out of the Clinton-Obama race.

Buckeye State Blog has a quick recap of the full report. You can see the full survey here.

The basics:

McCain would lose the state to either Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama. However, in a Clinton vs. McCain matchup, Clinton has a 10 point lead over McCain, whereas Obama would only have a 3 point lead, within the margin of error. (Clinton 52, McCain 42, Undecided 7 vs. Obama 47, McCain 44, Undecided 8.)

From ProgressOhio:

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner commissioned a test of the electronic
voting machines in Ohio and here are the results! This Penn State professor
is not an election rights advocate, but he's a computer expert and his results
will convince any voter that using computers in the voting process — from
pollbooks to voting machines to tabulating machines — is a very bad idea.

Click to find the video

The video is hard to get to and was not playing very well for me. Let's hope they get this into a better format. YouTube anyone?