Watch the speech that Yahoo!’s John Nichols says “Obama reaches the mountaintop” with…

“We tell them, you’re going to tell us what to do with our flag? We’ll tell you what to do with the pole,” Mike Huckabee

“I would point to the fact that Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was able to get through Congress something that President Kennedy was hopeful to do, the president before had not even tried, but it took a president to get it done,” - Hillary Clinton

More video… A great Barack Obama clip on Latino voters from the recent Nevada debate with yet another bit of stand-up at the front. His genuine personality and charm are really starting to show these days…

You know what, for all this noise about Bill Clinton, what about Michelle Obama? If I have one gripe about the Obama campaign thus far (other than playing safe and going to “four corners” in New Hampshire), it would be that Michelle hasn’t been utilized nearly enough.

This young — she’s only 44 — black woman is a powerhouse. Michelle’s just as eloquent and intelligent as her husband, and with her beauty and height — she’s nearly 6-feet tall — it’s impossible not to listen to her. Once you do, you can see that she speaks directly from the heart. None of this bad cop stuff Slick Willy is pulling. Michelle speaks the truth.

Personally, I think she’s a both a better role model for young women and a better representation of middle-aged women than either the cold and calloused Hillary Clinton or Stepford wife Laura Bush.

This excerpt from Telegraph really shows what she brings to the table:

On her 44th birthday, and less than 48 hours before today’s crucial Nevada caucuses, Mrs Obama spoke passionately about racial slurs against her husband and the symbolism of having a black family in the White House.

In a fiery comparison between his 2004 Senate campaign and this year’s presidential race, she said: “You know what they were saying about him then? They said he was too young. They said he was too inexperienced. They said he should wait his turn.

“They said he couldn’t build a political machine to match the might of a family in Illinois that had been running for years. They said he couldn’t raise the money. They said that he was too black. They said that he wasn’t black enough. Sound familiar?

“They said that his name was too funny. They said there was no way that white folks in downstate Illinois and vote for a man named Barack Obama. They said it because when power is confronted by change, they will say anything.”

Well said, Michelle. Well said. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing quite a bit more of you from this point on.

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.

Update 10:31:22 PM: EarthTimes.org reports that “polls say Obama would have won Michigan.” That’s pretty interesting, considering he didn’t even campaign there…

Thanks to Hill and the Huckster, I’m definitely having a good time today. 68 percent of Michigan black voters decided “uncommitted” — a voting option for a candidate about as real as the Tooth Fairy — was a better option for them than Hillary Clinton. I’d be remiss if I didn’t include that the Michigan results serve as a huge vote of confidence for Barack Obama among black and young voters. Read it for yourselves, from the site BAW:

Sen. Hillary Clinton won a majority of Michigan Democratic primary votes Tuesday, but African-Americans and young voters favored the “uncommitted” choice on the ballot, which was backed by supporters of Sen. Barack Obama.

A CNN exit poll showed 68 percent of blacks chose “uncommitted,” compared with 30 percent for Clinton.

I wonder what that number would have been if a good number of Democrats hadn’t voted for Romney in order to hurt McCain? And in case you haven’t been updated on the Democratic situation in the state as far as delegates are concerned, here it is:

Michigan has been stripped of its 156 national convention delegates for breaking party rules by moving up its primary, but party leaders expect the delegates will be seated at the convention.

Michigan’s decision to move its primary to Jan. 15 angered national Democratic Party officials who were trying to slow the “front-loading” by states of the primary process.

If you haven’t heard yet, Florida has also been stripped of its delegates for doing precisely the same thing. Obama will not campaign there either.