Hillary Clinton's New York Office denies the report from the New York Daily News that she does not want her name in nomination. The New York Daily News story cites no named sources, and her office confirmed the story is not true.

You may not like our friend Alegre, but she checks her facts, and she contacted Hillary's New York office.

A contact who met with Hillary in San Francisco yesterday (Thursday) who said this:

She talked about her name being put into nomination and she said that she wanted her voters to be heard and for her delegates to have the experience of what a real convention is.  She said that by doing this and by having a roll call that it would help unify the party.

As Alegre says "Think about it - after all she's been through in this campaign, does anyone really think she'd leak this monumental story to a paper like the Daily News?  It's laughable!"

Obama's supporters do him no favors by such divisive tactics as denying her a simple symbolic roll call vote, or spreading rumors in order to quash one. Obama is better than this, his supporters should follow suit.

Comedian Bernie Mac covered it all at last night's $2,300 per person Obama fundraiser:

1. women as people who do dishes and laundry. (Awesome, you've come a long way baby.)
   
2. His house is so cold because of his wife's menopause. (You couldn't think of ANY other material Bernie? Shall Hillary Clinton hire a comedian to make fun of your hair?)
   
3. And illustrating the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question by explaining to Mac's nephew that his mother and his sister are both 'ho's who would have sex with the mailman for the right price:
   

The Chicago-born comedian and actor told what he said was a joke about his nephew coming to him and asking the difference between a hypothetical question and a realistic question.

To demonstrate the difference, he tells the nephew to go ask his mother if she would make love to the mailman for $50,000. The mother says she would make love to the mailman and anybody else for $50,000.

He tells the nephew to go ask his sister if she would make love with her neighbor for $50,000. She says she would make love with the neighbor and anybody else for $50,000.

So he tells the nephew: "Hypothetically speaking, we should have $100,000. But realistically speaking we live with two hos," Bernie Mac said.

Obama thanked the comedian, who he called the "King of Comedy." After the presidential candidate told Mac he should clean up his act, Obama said he was just kidding:

"That means, by the way, Bernie you got to clean up your act. This is a family affair... I'm just messing with you," he said.

Gestures matter. It's about the gesture.

Obama needs to raise a lot of money. He's tapped all of his donors and would like to tap into Clinton's.

Obama was asked to send one email to his wide network of donors, and make a request that each supporter consider donating to Hillary Clinton to help retire her debt. It's tradition. It's a gesture of respect. It's also best done immediately after she endorses him, when the excitement is still high. She was a worthy adversary and created a lot of excitement around the Democrats this year.

The Obama campaign sent no such email. They reasoned, they told reporters, they could not afford to. They could send an email with her picture in it, or mention that she endorsed him. But ask people to retire her debt? Too risky.

You see, because the Obama campaign raised so much money, they could not afford to make a request of donors to retire Hillary's debt for fear said donors would take them up on it.

The Obama campaign, having raised so much money, decided they could not afford to opt into the same public financing system that John McCain did. The same system Obama had promised to opt into. The same system that was designed to keep fatcat donors from holding too much influence over presidential politics. The same imperfect, yet pretty effective (in Russ Feingold's words) system that was designed to level the playing field, to ensure that no one vote weighed more than another. But said system would LIMIT the Obama campaign to spending only what the McCain campaign was limited to spending.

The Obama campaign could not afford spending limits. It could not afford gestures.

The Obama campaign, having just decided to opt out of public financing because they believed they could raise a LOT MORE money  in a privatized General Election fundraising system just could not afford to divert any attention, any potential funds, to retire Hillary's debt.

This is no secret. Obama's donors are being quite vocal about this:

Mark Gilbert, a financier and Obama supporter who has been raising money in Florida and Utah, agreed that the request to help Clinton has been a challenge.

"What's a good way to put this? There's a feeling that the money she spent at the end may not have needed to have been spent," he said. "You want to help because it's important to Senator Obama. The flip side is, you don't want to take money away from what's needed in November, which is the more important goal."

Another episode of short attention span theater.

Serious Question: If Obama supplanted his own personality with that of George W. Bush, would you still support him?

I write this seeking to understand. You say it is "sad" that so many Democrats are criticizing the Democratic nominee. We live in a free and open society where we can criticize our leaders. So if it is "sad" - is it sad that:
a) Obama has driven Democrats to criticize him, or
b) that Democrats would dare to openly criticize their own nominee?

If you chose (b), is this sad because Democrats are weak? Because they are strong? Because they are too idealistic? Because we are such a dysfunctional family that we can never be happy with our own?

I think that's it - you want us to be a happy family, for once. You are exhausted from the fighting. You just want everybody to get along. You want (as a firm believer in the 1st Amendment, this word makes me gag) - unity. You want unity.

If you're in this group, can you understand how we Clinton Democrats felt in the primary when Obama and others trashed a phenomenal woman and former president, both of whom are admired around the world, one of whom is the only Democratic president to serve two terms in the last 40 years?

The New York Times reported Sunday that delays and cost overruns are plaguing convention planners who are running into rising costs and missed deadlines:

With the Denver convention less than two months away, problems range from the serious -- upwardly spiraling costs on key contracts still being negotiated -- to the mundane, like the reluctance of local caterers to participate because of stringent rules on what delegates will be eating, down to the color of the food. At last count, plans to renovate the inside of the Pepsi Center for the Democrats are $6 million over budget, which may force convention planners to scale back on their original design or increase their fund-raising goals.

"Major decisions are being settled only at the last minute," said one convention organizer, who requested anonymity because of the confidentiality of the contracting process. "These contracts should have been out and signed last March or April. We still have no agreement on the budget or the scope of the work for the build-out at the Pepsi Center. There is no reason why it is so late, why important issues have not been addressed and why we are trying to figure these things out at the last minute."

Most racism, sexism is unconscious.

Yesterday, Obama said this, in (what I believe was) a sincere effort to be more inclusive toward women:

Obama thanked Clinton and said she had broken barriers and served as a lesson to his daughters that women can do anything the boys can do "and do it better, and do it in heels" and he echoed the call for unity, while also hailing the influence and successes of her husband.

Let's separate this out a bit. Now I know some naysayers will say this is nitpicking, go ahead.

First let's take "women can do anything the boys can do." Flip it into a comment about race. To complete the exercise, let's pretend Hillary and Bill Clinton are godparents to two children whose mother is Maggie Williams. To take it a step further, let's pretend Hillary's husband is African American, and was never president:

Obama has proved to my African American godchildren that black adults can do anything the white kids can do.

So if you call Obama black, you're a racist because you're using the "one drop" rule.

Like Tiger Woods, Obama has only one black parent. Woods will not refer to himself as merely black because, as he told Barbara Walters "that would be like saying my mom doesn't exist."

So we can't call Obama black.

So let's call him biracial. Oh no, say some of you. That's racist:

When you try and tell us Obama is only 6.25% black, and use terms like bi-racial as some kind of wedge in the black community, don't be surprised if you are called a racist.

From the Kansas City Star:

The Democrats are throwing out what they consider to be code words that might be used by people who don't want a black president.

Sebelius offered up "he's not qualified" and "he's too liberal" as potential code words.

Obama said he might be called "inexperienced" and "young."

Say what?

A lot of Democrats didn't think Obama was well-qualified to be president. That's part of the reason why millions voted for Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

Face it: There are plenty of racist Americans who won't vote for Obama because he's black. We all know that.

But let's not allow Obama, Sebelius and others to chill the discussion -- by the GOP or Americans of all parties -- about Obama's actual qualifications for the presidency.