Rev Wright hurt continuing to grow for OBama says a new Rasmussen Poll. Only 4% of American adults believe that comments made by Barack Obama’s former Pastor have helped Obama’s bid for the White House. Sixty-six percent (66%) believe that the comments made by Reverend Jeremiah Wright have hurt Obama’s chances of winning.

However, just 24% say that Obama’s denunciation of his former Pastor make them more likely to vote for him. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say it makes them less likely to support the Illinois Senator. As you would expect, these results break sharply along partisan lines. Democrats, by a 35% to 20% margin say they are more likely to vote for Obama because he publicly denounced Wright. Republicans, by a 38% to 15% margin, say the opposite. Among those not affiliated with either major party, 17% are more likely to vote for Obama, 25% less likely.

Clinton lead OBama in Indiana 46-41% and OBama leads Clinton in North Carolina 49-40%according to polling released Tuesday morning.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe in the “benevolent brotherhood of man”. Today’s Ten Post Round-Up will probably not make it any easier:

1: The Supremes say it’s OK to require government-issued photo ID card in order to vote…

As Election Nears, Supreme Court Upholds Repressive Voter ID Law–AlterNet

2: The Secret Service rampant with racism?…

Cox reports “Noose allegedly found at Secret Service Training Center” and the Secret Service already has serious problems with racism–AMERICAblog

3: Money-saving tip: A stamp that is always equal to whatever postage is being charged for a 1 oz. letter, forever…

The Forever Stamp–BuzzFeed

4: Well, it looks like the media has found Jesse Jackson’s replacement…

The Wright Stuff–Hypocrisy.com

5: More of your tax dollars at work, supporting the troops, in Iraq…

DynCorp Manager Used Armored Car To Transport Hookers in Iraq–Muckraked

Retired Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and Barack Obama’s 20-year pastor, said criticism of him was “unfair” and “devious,” and done by people who know nothing about his church. But, his comments have dragged Democrat Presidential nominee wannabe Obama into a storm raising questions about his judgment.

The criticism that Wright refers to was sparked by his proclaiming from the pulpit “God damn America” for its racism. He accused the government of flooding black neighborhoods with drugs and of creating the AIDS virus to kill blacks and branded the country as the KKK of America. Wright’s remarks are the subject of an interview on taxpayer funded PBS’s Bill Moyer’s Journal to be broadcast Friday evening.

Apparently Barack Obama’s pastor has launched a campaign to resurrect both their tattered images. Wright’s campaign to save the campaign for the Democrat Presidential nomination of Obama seems ill-advised and poorly considered because it will pull the lid off the issue of Obama’s 20-year relationship with Wright.

In a March 18 speech in Philadelphia, Obama described the history of injustice that fueled Wright’s comments, while also condemning his pastor’s statements and acknowledging white resentment of African-Americans. Asked his response to the senator’s speech, Wright said, “He’s a politician, I’m a pastor.”

Political commentators on Friday’s Good Morning America, that broke news and showed excerpts from the Moyer interview said Obama’s people must be “tearing their hair out” because of Wright’s campaign. That seems to be a fairly general consensus.

Wright is scheduled to speak Sunday at a Chicago NAACP Dinner and Monday at the National Press Club in Washington. Wright’s campaign comes as GOP Presidential nominee Senator John McCain is arguing with the North Carolina Republican Party over its ad excoriating Wright and Obama for his connection to him. The TV ad is scheduled to run Monday, ahead of the state’s crucial May 6 primary. A narrator in the spot says, “He’s just too extreme for North Carolina.” McCain has asked local officials not to run the ad, but the state GOP said no.

Nine percent of film critics have given positive reviews to Ben Steins new movie EXPELLED, No intelligence necessary that questions the notion of random life versus intelligent design. In contrast, Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” is adored by 93 percent of the critics notwithstanding its nonscientific premise. The New York Times uses some choice words to describe the movie, stating that it is a “conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.” Time magazine fumes that “the man made famous by Ferris Bueller . . . quickly wades into waters far too deep for him.”

The public apparently isn’t listening. “Expelled” had a huge opening weekend for a documentary with a radioactive topic. It placed ninth with a box-office take of $3.1 million. By comparison, Morgan Spurlock, director of “Super Size Me,” debuted his “Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?” documentary on the same weekend. Spurlock’s film took in an embarrassing $143,300.

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was seriously mulling a challenge to Senator Arlen Specter as a Democrat in 2010. In the wake of a devastating story in the New York Times Magazine which depicts Matthews as a pompous, self important, sexist asshole, Matthews told the Philadelphia Enquirer in an interview that he is not going to run according to a report by Roger Stone in his StoneZone.

In the meantime, Senator Specter’s cancer has returned and he will be treated, but few believe that that will deter him from running and winning in 2010.

John McCain is a hell raising maverick who regularly urges contrarians to perform anatomically impossible physical acts. He is the McCain who has built up massive popularity among American voters with his populist opposition to swindlers, liars and thieves, whether in business, Congress, labor or the defense community says Dick Morris.com. (T)his week, the old John McCain began to re-emerge. Articulating what tens of millions of Americans feel, he blamed the “greedy” of Wall Street for causing the current economic problems. The Washington Post devoted several thousands of words Sunday to raise the issue of McCain’s temper dredging up incidents as far back as when he was a 16-year old high school student.

“Does he get angry? Yes,” said fellow curmudgeon Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who supports McCain’s presidential bid. “But it’s never been enough to blur his judgment. . . . If anything, his passion and occasional bursts of anger have made him more effective.” “…Harry S. Truman once threatened bodily harm in a letter to a reviewer who wrote disparagingly about the musical talents of his daughter. Richard M. Nixon ranted, and so did Bill Clinton (fly into purple rages),” says the Post article.

“Temper can sometimes be a political instrument,” said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. “There are sometimes calculated displays of temper, which is what Lyndon Johnson used to persuade people. . . “

The argument is largely extant inside the beltway where arrogance and narcissism is in every dish – everywhere else in Americans tell each other what they really think and in no uncertain terms.Regardless of the Washington Post, “By flanking the Democrats on the front of economic and social populism, McCain can be himself and can win, “says Morris. Conversely Obama is making the social populist case against himself stronger with each passing day. His “gun-totting god nuts” analysis of small-town America and his elitist dismissal of religion, anti-immigration concerns and hunting as evidence of bitterness and the need for easy solutions was awful.

By the way 60% of the nation’s adults believe the federal tax on gasoline should be suspended until prices come under control. Only 24% opposed the proposal made by John McCain to axe the federal gas tax.

April 22, 2008 is EARTH DAY or EARTHDAY that appear to be separate groups. Earth Day was founded in 1970 and the Environmental Protection Agency’s official birthday, listed on its website, is December 2, 1970. EARTHDAY’s website says it promotes environmental citizenship and year round “progressive action” worldwide. Twenty million people across America celebrated the first Earth Day and the number has remained constant. The EARTHDAY website says 1 billion worldwide are involved to some degree.

The ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY EARTH DAY website focuses on domestic issues and events and shares in the EPA’S federal taxpayer budget specifically allocated $3 million for the day exclusive of indirect costs that may add another $20 million to the figure. The EPAs spends nearly $1 million an hour. For fiscal year 2009 it requested $7.1 billion for 17,000 full-time equivalent employees.

EPA’s website credits Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, with an epiphany of conservation calling it “This exhaustively researched, carefully reasoned, and beautifully written attack on the indiscriminate use of pesticides.” More recently Carson’s core allegation that wild bird’s eggshells were being thinned due to DDT has been debunked and much of its 1972 ban has been rolled back amid estimates its banning unnecessarily costs 20 million human death mostly from malaria. A REASON magazine study puts it in summary this way, “Carson’s concerns about the effects of synthetic chemicals on human health were not completely unwarranted. Along with other researchers, she was simply ignorant of the facts. But after four decades in which tens of billions of dollars have been wasted chasing imaginary risks without measurably improving American health, her intellectual descendants don’t have the same excuse.”

President Bush announced his plan this week to limit greenhouse gases — he said he will ban all greenhouses. — Leno

I was watching a BBC broadcast about the protests marking the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq and came to the conclusion that the American public either has ADD or someone, maybe Dick Cheney, is spiking the public drinking water supply with LSD. I found myself becoming infuriated with the fact that the American people actually think the “war is going pretty well right now.” Those were the reporter’s exact words. I made it a point to write them down because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The propaganda about the “surge” working is apparently being bought lock, stock and barrel. I’m trying to understand how this administration could possibly have earned this level of trust, particularly since everything about this war is based on outright lies.

The lies are a matter of public record. A complete summary of the 935 lies manufactured by the Bush administration to justify the Iraq war, which of our public officials told them and when they were told can be seen at www.publicintegrity.org. Let there be absolutely no mistake here. What was done is both illegal and impeachable. George Bush looked the American people and Congress in the eye and lied and his minions, even Colin Powell, followed suit. They lied about weapons of mass destruction. They lied about finding a bio-weapons lab. They lied about Iraq trying to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger. They lied about Saddam Hussein being involved in the 9-11 terrorist attacks. They continue to lie about this war. So, please, tell me again why Americans should believe one word out of our commander-in-chief’s mouth about the surge working. However, beyond the “illegal” aspect, I am ashamed that the American people could buy into a war that is so immoral on so many fronts.

Americans talk about Iraq like it’s nothing more than a mass of land. It isn’t. It’s a country made up of people just as is America. Until we invaded their country, Iraqis got up every day, went to work and took care of their families. While we sat glued to our television sets and reveled in the “shock and awe” of America’s military might, innocent men, women and children were dying for absolutely no good reason at all. More than a million Iraqis have died in this war, and at least two million have been displaced. Of course, Americans can assuage themselves by buying into the lie that the “surge” has resulted in decreased violence. While it’s true that there were fewer deaths in January (20 deaths a day due to political violence), there were increases in February (29 deaths a day) and March (39 deaths a day). While Dick Cheney was spinning his rosy view of the war during his unannounced visit to Iraq earlier this week, one of the deadliest days ever was unfolding in Karbala, where a suicide bombing killed 50 people and injured dozens more. The so-called “surge” is going in the opposite direction of what the administration wants you to believe.

Of course, it’s easy for Americans to look casually at war. We’ve never had a war on our own soil. We’ve not been displaced. We’ve not had a first-hand look at the violence of war and the innocent lives lost for the missteps our leaders take. We don’t worry about going to the market to buy food and perhaps dying in a roadside bombing. Yes, we look at images on a television, but we really only see what the perpetrators want us to see and we can turn it off any time we want. American culture glorifies and romanticizes war. It rarely focuses on its destructive effects. And while our president referred to the 9-11 terrorists attacks as being “at war,” what happened in New York City on September 11, 2001 pales in comparison to what has been going on in Iraq for the past five years.

Lest I’m accused of being a terrorist sympathizer or an unpatriotic citizen, I have not forgotten that we are approaching 4,000 American deaths in Iraq for a war that has had absolutely nothing to do with protecting our nation from attack. This senseless war is not about fighting for freedom or protecting the American way of life. It is not about avenging the terror attacks of 9-11. While some Americans seem to find comfort in the belief that we are fighting the good fight, the facts are that Iraq was not involved in the terrorists attacks and that America was never threatened or in imminent danger from Iraq. Even one American soldier’s death in Iraq would be too high a price to pay for this unjustifiable war.

President Bush has played the “God-is-with-us” card time and time again when justifying the invasion of Iraq, painting himself as God’s freedom warrior. Whether you’re Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Protestant, the notion that any “god” would approve of the death and destruction and the not-so-holy-acts of torture and abuse going on in Iraq is repugnant. It is the most immoral position of all for this president to take. And Americans who stand side-by-side with President Bush on the issue of Iraq should be considered immoral as well. It is time for Americans to look beyond their own comfort zone, make the Iraq war an election issue again, and demand an end to it.