By now, everyone has heard the comparisons being used to depict the Democratic presidential nomination race. There seem to be thousands of them.

• Hillary Clinton is Dunkin’ Donuts. Barack Obama is Starbucks.
• Hillary is a PC. Obama is a Mac.
• Hillary is prose. Obama is poetry.
• Hillary is analog, Obama is digital. (Which doesn’t work because analog records still definitely sound good and have their place)

Those comparisons only tell part of the story.

A more effective comparison is that Hillary Clinton is VHS, while Barack Obama is DVD.

VHS definitely had it’s day. It beat out all its competitors (like Betamax), and stayed on top of the game for some time. It got the job done during its day. Not too long after its inception, however, we knew that bigger and better things would eventually come along. We knew someday we would outgrow the format. Someday relatively soon… at least many of us hoped.

Then DVD comes along. After a couple failed attempts (ahem, Laser Disc), people thought that the format was too good to be true. It sounded better. It looked better. Everything about it seemed to make it a vastly superior product. Despite the legitimacy of DVD, people remained skeptical. While some consumers took the DVD plunge and reaped the benefits, others stuck by the tried and true dinosaur format of VHS.

The skeptics haters said things like:

• “I’ve invested so much in tapes, and they’ve always been dependable. I think I’ll just stick with these tapes for a few more years. No need to change yet.”
• “Why should I go for change? Could VHS be better? Sure, but it’s always worked for me. I think I’ll play it safe for now.”
• “DVD looks and sounds pretty, but does it actually work? How can one little disc accomplish all that stuff? There’s no way it can do all that.”

It took some time, but after a while the entire nation realized that we had outgrown VHS and its limited abilities. We moved on to DVD and never looked back.

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Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post has graded all the presidential candidates economic stimulus plans, and Barack Obama received the only “A” on either side. In fact, the only “B” was given to John Edwards. With the nation focused on the economy, this is key. Especially considering Republican frontrunner John McCain (”D-plus”) has admitted that he doesn’t know much about the economy. Check it out:

Barack Obama: A-minus. I criticized his previous tax plan, but Obama is at the head of the class with an intelligently designed, $120 billion stimulus plan. He would speed a $250 tax credit to most workers, followed by another $250, triggered automatically, if the economy continues on its sour path. Obama would direct a similar rebate to low- and middle-income seniors, who are also apt to spend and could get checks quickly. One demerit: Obama omits any increase in food stamp benefits, which Moody’s estimates would have the greatest bang for the buck, $1.73 for every dollar spent.

John Edwards: B-minus. Edwards gets points for handing in his paper early — in December, he issued a $25 billion stimulus proposal (plus $75 billion more if needed), including important help to states to avoid cutting Medicaid rolls. But like Hillary Clinton (see below), he would spend too much money on programs — investing in “green collar” jobs, for instance — with too long a lag time to make them an effective stimulus. Edwards’s grade goes down because he also hasn’t explained how the $75 billion would be spent.

Hillary Clinton: C-plus. Clinton, too, raised the issue early, then turned in a faulty first draft with a $70 billion stimulus plan that didn’t provide much immediate stimulation. It included a $25 billion increase in the program to help low-income Americans with heating costs — an excessive amount (the current program is under $3 billion) that probably wouldn’t kick in until next winter. Even worse was her housing plan, including a five-year freeze on subprime mortgage rates that could produce higher interest rates and reduce liquidity.

Four days later, Clinton said she would immediately implement a $40 billion tax rebate plan she had put in reserve in her first draft. Fine, but overall, the Obama plan devotes a far greater percentage to spending that is more likely to jump-start the economy.

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.