Scarlett Johansson recently deflected engagement questions by admitting her love for the candidacy of Barack Obama. The smokin’ hot and enormously talented young actress even said she was engaged to him. I feel ya, Scarlett — that’s how all of us Obamaites feel. Just look at the celebrity endorsements Obama has garnered: George Clooney, Johansson, Kanye West, Matt Damon, Oprah, Usher, Warren Buffet, Will Smith, etc.

Meanwhile, who does Billary have? Steven Spielberg? They’ve known him for like 30-40 years, and he also donated to Obama and threw a fundraiser for him. And the GOP gets washed-up action heroes like Chuck Norris and Sly Stallone. No wonder the term “Barack Star” was coined.

From the A.P.:

“I am engaged … to Barack Obama,” Johansson joked in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. “My heart belongs to Barack, and that is who I am currently, finally, engaged to. Yes.”

Here’s an e-mail from Senator and ex-Democratic Presidential Nominee John Kerry I received today:

Dear Adam,

I support Barack Obama because he doesn’t seek to perfect the politics of Swiftboating — he seeks to end it.

This is personal for me, and for a whole lot of Americans who lived through the 2004 election.

As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove’s twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone’s character just to win an election. But as someone who cares about winning this election and changing the country I love, I know it’s not enough to complain about a past we can’t change when our challenge is to win the future — which is why we must stop the Swiftboating, stop the push-polling, stop the front groups, and stop the email chain smears.

The truth matters, but how you fight the lies matters even more. We must be determined never again to lose any election to a lie.

This year, the attacks are already starting. Some of you may have heard about the disgusting lies about Barack Obama that are being circulated by email. These attacks smear Barack’s Christian faith and deep patriotism, and they distort his record of more than two decades of public service. They are nothing short of “Swiftboat” style anonymous attacks.

These are the same tactics the right has used again and again, and as we’ve learned, these attacks, no matter how bogus, can spread and take root if they go unchecked.

But not this time — we’re fighting back.

And when I say “we,” I mean that literally. I know Barack is committed to fighting every smear every time. He’ll fight hard and stand up for the truth. But he can’t do it alone.

We need you to email the truth to your address books. Print it out and post it at work. Talk to your neighbors. Call your local radio station. Write a letter to the editor. If lies can be spread virally, let’s prove to the cynics that the truth can be every bit as persuasive as it is powerful.

The Obama campaign has created a place where you can find the truth you’ll need to push back on these smears and a way to spread the truth to all of your address book.

Take action here:

http://my.barackobama.com/factcheckaction

So when your inbox fills up with trash and the emails of smear and fear, find the facts, and help defeat the lies.

Barack Obama is committed to bringing our country together to meet the challenges we face, but he knows that power gives up nothing without a struggle — and to win the chance to change America, we must first defeat the hateful tactics that have been used to tear us apart for too long.

With your help, we can turn the page on an era of small, divisive politics — but only if next time you hear these attacks on Barack, you take action immediately:

http://my.barackobama.com/factcheckaction

The fight is just heating up — we won’t let them steal this election with lies and distortions.

Thank you,

John Kerry

• Andrew Sullivan — who I’ve started to read quit a bit more recently — not only points out similarities between George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton, but also digs up a video that shows that the Bush camp actually likes HRC and trusts her with its legacy. The article even goes as far as to use words like “Rovian” and “sleaze” to describe the Clintons. In my opinion, getting compared to Karl Rove is about as bad as it gets. He’s a brilliant man, but he’s also the scum of the earth.

• A look at if Hillary’s young women supporters are old enough to truly remember what went down the last time the Clintons lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

• Slate wonders “what on earth we are doing when we make the Clinton family drama—yet again—a central part of our own politics?”

• Donklephant takes a look at the Clintons getting exposed on Meet the Press, and looks at the condescending nature of Hillary’s attack on Barack Obama over his comments about Ronald Reagan.

• Meet Obama’s speech writer, Jon Favreau, who says writing for a speaker and writer of Obama’s caliber is like being “Ted Williams’s batting coach.”

• The Huffington Post says that Obama may face “white resistance” in Southern states. This is exactly the reason why I think it is a good thing for Obama that John Edwards is staying in this race.

• House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn — “one of the most powerful African-Americans in Congress” — says that Bill Clinton needs to “chill a little bit.”

• The false Muslim e-mail attacks and rumors have spread so rampantly that Obama has been forced to put out mailers confirming his Christian faith in South Carolina. Don’t worry; Obama is still a very big believer in the separation of church and state.

More to come after the big debate…

Here in Missouri, Barack Obama has picked up endorsements from the two biggest Democratic women politicians in the state — Sen. Claire McCaskill and now ex-Sen. Jean Carnahan. Typically, as Missouri goes so does the nation, so winning this state will be huge.

I think these endorsements along with ads like the one below (which is now playing here), can help Obama do well with women voters, a key demographic in his battle with Hillary Clinton. Also, from what I can tell, people aren’t very fond of Hillary in this state. Maybe in a few parts of Kansas City and St. Louis, but that’s about it.

Check out the new ad:

I have a ton of stuff for everybody before I call it quits for the night, so I figured I’d just lump it all together in a link dump with my brief thoughts on each topic…

• The first link is one to FactCheck.org. This is a long piece that puts to rest a lot of the malicious and completely false rumors that are flying around about Barack Obama, mostly through e-mails. By the way, do people actually believe all the shit that gets e-mailed to them? Do these people also lose thousands of dollars to e-mail scams? Or are they just itching for an excuse to be bigots? C’mon, America, you’re better than this. Monday is Martin Luther King Day, and I’d like to at least think we’ve made some progress since his death.

• This link from C-Span is proof that Obama indeed recites the Pledge of Allegiance. Watch it for yourself if you must.

• Here’s yet another story which proves Obama is a Christian, not a Muslim. People just need to get online and do some research. Yeah, sometimes I forget that this is the same country where people see an explosion and a famous face in a movie trailer and are already halfway to the theater.

• I absolutely love this smart ass response to the question about these very rumors that was asked at the Nevada debate.

• And, yes, that indeed is a photo of Obama getting sworn in OVER THE BIBLE by the one and only Dick Cheney.

• Here’s a link to a Mason-Dixon poll courtesy of MSNBC. Obama leads Hillary Clinton 40 percent to 31, with John Edwards a very distant third. Yes, even in his birth state. I think it’s just about time for Johnny to gracefully bow out. The good news is that Obama looks very strong among black voters and women, the two voter types who are likely to decide the outcome. Obama also leads in the categories of “change,” the economy and health care, but surprisingly Hillary leads on Iraq. Do people not know that she VOTED FOR the Iraq war? It just boggles my ‘effin mind.

• A fantastic piece about Edith Childs, the 59-year-old South Carolina black woman who started the “Fired up! Ready to go!” Obama chant.

• There’s been a “judicial decision upholding Nevada caucus locations on the Las Vegas strip to aid casino workers” in voting. This is a huge win for the Obama camp, and could be enough to provide a Nevada victory. Yes, that was what all that bitching from Slick Willy was about.

• Obama “skewers” his presidential opponents over their lame responses to the “biggest weakness” question from the debate earlier this week. Hilarious. From The New York Times.
  

• After nabbing an endorsement from the state’s biggest newspaper, Obama now has an endorsement from the state’s second biggest paper as well — the Reno Gazzette-Journal. A glowing endorsement at that. I’ll leave you with this quote on Hillary, which nearly had me standing up and cheering:

Clinton, however, continues to struggle under the cloud of her husband, the former President Bill Clinton. She is challenged to escape the perception that she represents the status quo and that the advisers, the bureaucracy and the baggage from the former president’s administration would follow her into the White House — if she were to make it through the November election.

After a great Nevada Democratic debate outing where Barack Obama was candid and on point about the issues — not to mention personable and extremely presidential looking — the Obama campaign received another HUGE endorsement in Nevada. An official endorsement of Obama to Nevada Democrats will be made by the editorial board of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state’s biggest paper, in tomorrow’s edition. Link here, and here’s a screen grab:

First the Culinary Workers endorsement, then Obama leading in the most recent poll, followed by the strong debate performance and now this endorsement — things are shaping up nicely.

Still, Obamaites can take nothing for granted after New Hampshire. I will be back in the morning with a breakdown of the debate, and a look at how Hillary employs the “politics of fear” she so often speaks out against.

From CBS News:

Among a barrage of prominent statewide elected officials to back Obama publicly this month is Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, and U.S. Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Tim Johnson of South Dakota.

What all three politicians have in common is that they are Democrats who have cracked the code in getting elected in states where Republicans historically have triumphed at the presidential level. George W. Bush won these states both times.

So did most of his Republican predecessors. In fact, these three states have each voted for a Democratic presidential nominee only once since 1948.

The string of recent Obama endorsements seems to be more than a coincidence.

During extensive interviews in recent weeks in Republican-leaning states, Politico found widespread belief among current and former Democratic statewide officials that Obama is the more electable candidate with their electorates. These politicians also frequently registered a fear that Clinton’s personality and past history make her too polarizing to win independent and Republican-leaning voters.

Point blank — Hillary won’t be able to win the red states in a general election.

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This is just plain ol’ ridiculous. Check it out, from TPM Election Central:

Barack Obama is apparently taking the new legal controversy in the Nevada caucuses, and turning it to his rhetorical advantage. The recent lawsuit was filed by the Nevada state teachers union, against the at-large precinct caucuses that would allow Vegas Strip workers to easily participate.

Curiously, the lawsuit was filed just a few days after the Culinary Workers Union, which represents workers on the Strip, endorsed Barack Obama. On top of that, the teachers union’s leaders and attorneys have ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

“Ever since I got the support of Local 226, the lawyers decided to get involved. The rules were OK when the other campaigns thought they would win the Culinary endorsement,” Obama told a union rally. “As soon as you decided to support the outsider, the working people instead of the big shots, all the sudden they decided they wanted to change the rules.”

Hillary and Co., that’s not just bush league, it’s Bush league. First rumors fly that she hijacked New Hampshire with vote-counting machines, now this? Not looking good.

Update: Bill Clinton is now defending this, and yet another analyst, MSNBC deputy political director Mark Murray, is calling them out for it (MSNBC):

(Of course, we’ll ask again: If the Culinary Workers had endorsed Hillary, would there even be a lawsuit? And if so, would Bill be defending it?)

Pathetic.