A New York Daily News reporter, Errol Louis, revealed that Rev. Barbara Reynolds, who is also a journalist, is a Clinton supporter who suggested Rev. Wright as a speaker to the National Press Club awhile back and was recently asked to organize his appearance there this week.

Since Louis broke his story, the relevant February entry on Barbara Reynold’s blog has disappeared — just vanished. In addition, neither Rev. Reynolds nor the Clinton campaign, as of the posting of this news alert, have responded to queries about whether Reynolds suggested and organized Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club with the knowledge of the Clinton campaign or go-betweens for the Clinton campaign.

Using cache recovery and other techniques, a BuzzFlash reader recovered the key blog entry that Errol Louis quoted from before it was deleted.

These are, allegedly, Rev. Reynolds’ words of support for Clinton and explanation as to why she voted for Clinton in Maryland:

Using Google’s cache and examining the source code of the deleted entry, I have been able to reconstruct the posting from Barbara Reynolds’ blog (http://reynoldsworldnews.blogspot.com/) dated February 14, 2008, titled "HOPE", in which Barbara Reynolds, the person who supposedly organized Rev. Wright’s appearance at the National Press Club, praises and thanks the Clintons.

The URL of the Google Cache is here:

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:SIgvOo…
and the text I retrieved is here:

Hope

February 14, 2008

Never before has the political clout of African-American women been so crucial as in this presidential race when they make up as high as two-thirds of registered black voters. Black women voters are the primary reason why Senator Barack Obama pulled Oprah and Senator Clinton garnered Maya Angelo and the majority of the black women in the Congressional Black Caucus in their respective camps.

As expected Sen. Barack Obama trounced Sen. Hillary Clinton in the Chesapeake Trifecta of Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

With most of my Maryland and DC friends beating the drum for Sen. Obama, I tried to join the parade. Usually I am a drum major, leading momentum, but not this time.

Like many African American women, I have struggled with the dilemma of selecting a black man or a white woman to go against warmonger Sen. John McCain. My problem was that both Senators Obama and Clinton are darn good.

Finally I voted for Senator Clinton. My first reason was that as seductive as Obama’s mantra of hope, the Clintons legacy of help is more substantive and stronger.

Hope by definition is not based on facts. It is an emotional expectation. Things hoped for may or may not come. But help based on experience trumps hope every time.

How do you abandon someone like Hillary Clinton, who at every opportunity worked for causes benefiting the poor, especially children? Her work began in her early days with her mentor Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund and at Yale Law School, where she pursued children’s studies. Early on her stated life’s goal was to be a "voice for America’s children."

Look how different things would be that before any policy, rather foreign or domestic, could be advanced, the fate of our children would be the first consideration, a value that I believe Clinton would bring to the table as president.

Under Bill, this nation championed diversity. With Bill and Hillary as first Lady in the White House, black unemployment declined, small business loans to African-American doubled, there was strong support for affirmative action and more blacks in his Cabinet and in high positions than ever before. In addition, Hillary made history by selecting a black woman, Maggie Williams, as her chief of staff. To offset plummeting election returns, Williams has been promoted to head her campaign staff.

In fact during the Clinton years, the nation experienced the longest economic boom in history: unemployment dropped from 7.5% to 4%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average of stocks rose from 3,200 points to over 10,000, and the federal budget rose from a quarter-trillion-dollar deficit to a surplus of nearly that much.

Now since one Clinton cleaned up the first mess created by Bush I, why not let another Clinton clean up the mess created by Bush Light and why not a woman?

Traditionally, I have sympathized or cast my lot with the "underperson," the one needlessly being picked on or ridiculed. Media treatment of Senator Clinton has been degrading.

Much of the news media have gone bonkers over Senator Obama, pandering and refusing to ask tough questions, while intensely and sometimes nastily grilling Senator Clinton. Pundits continue to stress that Clinton is "polarizing," and that 41 percent of voters say they won’t vote for her as if to cement a self-defeating prophecy.

When the Clintons were in office, I worked at the executive levels of journalism. It was overwhelming to see how many white men, even liberals, detested Hillary not only because she is a woman but because she did not play it safe and took on controversial issues, such as trying to win health care for the more than 44 million people who can’t afford it. She lost the fight, but it took courage to start it and I believe she deserves another chance to win it.

Atty. James Walker, a law professor at the University of Connecticut, explains the disparate treatment this way: "In light of issues like the Don Imus firings, neither politicians nor the press want to go near anything racist. The public environment has been sanitized toward political correctness, but there are no holds on sexism. That is why there can be open season on Senator Clinton."

"Hillary is getting the benefit of Bill’s baggage, his dirt from the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but Obama is getting a clean slate because of the guilt recently brought to the forefront of how America has treated blacks. That means an easy walk for Obama and the opposite for Senator Clinton," Walker said.

I also find it troublesome that so many influential Republican conservatives are confessing their love for Senator Obama. When people who are my enemies become friends of my friends, I am just naturally suspicious.

In any event, Sen. Obama, tall, brilliant, handsome, with a wonderful wife and a message of hope would make a good president, but I embrace Clinton because at the highest levels they have helped make life better for African-Americans. My vote for Hillary in the Maryland Primary was my way of saying Thank You.

Could all be a coincidence, but that’s one heck of a Clintonian coincidence to be sure.

There’s this falacy being echoed by the Billary fans. That fallacy being that Barack would not be where he is if he were not Black. Well. let’s set the record straight. If it’s truly the case that barack only won the majority of states, the majority of voters, the majority of delegates because the "Black" vote turned out, then maybe, just maybe the "Black" vote is no longer a marginalized minority. Maybe if he has garnered the numbers that he has, then may, just maybe the "Black" vote deserves just a touch more attention that it currently receives.  Is there any chance that somehow, during the years of "Black" disenfranchisement, of "Black" disparagement, of the "Black" vote being ignored, the "Black" vote has surpassed the "White" vote in national importance? 

It’s possible that the "White" vote has become so used to being the clear majority that it somehow can’t conceive that it could ever NOT be the deciding voice. Welcome to America, we are a diverse country, everyone has an equal voice, even the "minorities" can decide the future of this great nation.

(CNN) — Can we all just stop the silly nonsense over who is an elitist and whether an "average American" will occupy the White House?

Listening to the punditry today, you would think folks who revel in the comedy of Larry the Cable Guy or Katt Williams really would have a shot at the White House.

It’s totally absurd.

So, Sen. Barack Obama is all of a sudden an elitist because he went to Columbia and Harvard? And Sen. Hillary Clinton is an elitist because she went to Yale? Do you actually think Sen. John McCain isn’t an elitist? He went to an exclusive college — the Naval Academy, and that is one of the hardest places to get into. (You can’t even apply unless a member of Congress recommends you.)

Karl Rove, who tries to portray himself as the common man but is just another rich Republican, has called both Democratic candidates elitists. Well, his former boss, President George W. Bush, went to Yale. So did Bush’s dad, former president George H.W. Bush, and his granddaddy, former Sen. Prescott Bush. All three Bushes also were members of the super elite organization Skull and Bones. The younger Bush later went to Harvard.

He walked into the governor’s mansion and the presidency on the strength of his name and his dad’s money and connections. Sounds like an elitist to me!

But no, we’re supposed to be fooled by the cowboy boots, folksy charm and him removing brush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch (don’t forget the family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, where all the "regular" folks hang out).

Surely you recall when Bush nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court? Those same conservative voices decrying the elitist Democrats were blasting her because she went to little old Southern Methodist University, that unremarkable — their view — university in Dallas, Texas. (By the way, that will be the home of the George W. Bush Library.)

You can bet a pitcher of beer that had she graduated from Harvard, Yale or Princeton, she wouldn’t have been derisively referred to as too plain and not educated enough by the elitists in the Republican Party.

And let’s stay with the Supreme Court for a moment. Where did its members go to school?

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. — Undergrad and law school, Harvard.

Justice John Paul Stevens — Undergrad: University of Chicago. Law school: Northwestern.

Justice Antonin Scalia — Undergrad: Georgetown University and the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Law school: Harvard.

Justice Anthony Kennedy — Undergrad: Stanford University and the London School of Economics. Law school: Harvard.

Justice David Souter — Undergrad: Harvard; Magdalen College, Oxford; Oxford University. Law school: Harvard.

Justice Clarence Thomas — Undergrad: Holy Cross. Law school: Yale.

Justice Ruth Ginsburg — Undergrad: Cornell. Law school: Harvard (attended); finished at Columbia.

Justice Stephen Breyer — Undergrad, Stanford; Magdalen College, Oxford. Law school: Harvard.

Justice Samuel Alito — Undegrad: Princeton. Law school: Yale.

That’s pretty much an elite list of schools.

We have deluded ourselves into thinking the person elected to the White House is really and truly like the rest of us.

All three candidates don’t know what it’s like to face the daunting health care challenges millions of Americans are confronted with daily. Each are members of the U.S. Senate, and they have the best health care money can buy for life — we pay for it! While your pension plan is shot to hell, their plan will NEVER be underfunded. The members will see to that, courtesy of taxpayer dollars.

Forget how many times Obama bowls gutter balls, Clinton tosses back shots of whiskey and McCain talks about how he’s a regular guy. Each, courtesy of their $169,300 annual salary, makes far more than the average American.

And when it comes to wealth, Clinton gets to enjoy the $100 million she and her husband raked in since he left the White House (even their hefty book advances dwarf regular authors).

McCain’s wife, Cindy, runs one of Anheuser Busch’s largest beer distributors and is worth more than $100 million. They will never be living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Obama is the poorest of the three, but he did earn more than a million bucks courtesy of his best-selling books, "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams from My Father" after delivering his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention. How many average Americans wouldn’t mind having a million dollars in their savings account?

Bottom line: The narrative about our presidential candidates being just regular folks is a tired myth that gets repeated each and every day. And their efforts to show that they are "just like us" are really pathetic.

You don’t have to go duck hunting, be seen buying milk at the grocery store for your family or having a beer at the local bar to show that you’re "one of us." Just do what rich and highly educated folks do when they are in politics: Advance policies that will at least allow me to keep a few more dollars in my pocket and be able to afford a home.

One more thing: Don’t buy fully into the nonsense tossed out by some of the loudest voices on television, radio and in print who decry these "elitists" and trumpet that they are for the blue collar, middle-class worker in middle America.

Many of them pull down multimillion-dollar salaries and run into these same candidates on Martha’s Vineyard and in the Hamptons when they all vacation. They, too, will pull every favor they have to get their children in the posh private schools and Ivy League institutions.

Yes, we even have elitists in the media.

Who would’ve thunkit?

Sorry. My $  .02 here.

There is no excuse for Philadelphia to expect Obama to play party to their particular brand of paola. Just because it’s written to be legal does not make it right.

Fourteen months into a campaign that has the feel of a movement, Sen. Barack Obama has collided with the gritty political traditions of Philadelphia, where ward bosses love their candidates, but also expect them to pay up.

The dispute centers on the dispensing of "street money," a long-standing Philadelphia ritual in which candidates deliver cash to the city’s Democratic operatives in return for getting out the vote.Flush with payments from well-funded campaigns, the ward leaders and Democratic Party bosses typically spread out the cash in the days before the election, handing $10, $20 and $50 bills to the foot soldiers and loyalists who make up the party’s workforce.

It is all legal — but Obama’s people are telling the local bosses he won’t pay.

That sets up a culture clash, pitting a candidate who promises to transform American politics against the realities of a local political system important to his presidential hopes. Pennsylvania holds its primary April 22.

Obama’s posture confounds neighborhood political leaders sympathetic to his cause. They caution that if the senator from Illinois withholds money that gubernatorial, mayoral and presidential candidates have willingly paid out for decades, there could be defections to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. And the Clinton campaign, in contrast, will oblige in forking over the money, these ward leaders predict.

"We’ve heard directly from the Obama organizer who organizes our ward, and he told us it’s an entirely volunteer organization and that I should not expect to see anything from the Obama campaign other than ads on TV and the support that volunteers are giving us," said Greg Paulmier, a ward leader in the northwest part of the city.

Neither the Clinton nor the Obama campaign would say publicly whether it would comply with Philadelphia’s street money customs. But an Obama aide said Thursday that it had never been the campaign’s practice to make such payments. Rather, the campaign’s focus is to recruit new people drawn to Obama’s message, the aide said.

The field operation "hasn’t been about tapping long-standing political machinery," the aide said.

Carol Ann Campbell, a ward leader and Democratic superdelegate who supports Obama, estimated that the amount of street money Obama would need to lay out for election day is $400,000 to $500,000.

"This is a machine city, and ward leaders have to pay their committee people," Campbell said. "Barack Obama’s campaign doesn’t pay workers, and I guarantee you if they don’t put up some money for those street workers, those leaders will most likely take Clinton money. It won’t stop him from winning Philadelphia, but he won’t come out with the numbers that he needs" to win the state.

A neutral observer, state Rep. Dwight Evans, whose district is in northwest Philadelphia, said there might be a racial subtext to the dispute. Ward leaders, he said, see Obama airing millions of dollars worth of television ads in the city — money that benefits largely white station owners, feeding resentment. People wonder why Obama isn’t sharing the largesse with the largely African American field workers trying to get him elected, Evans said.

"They view it that the white people are getting all the money for TV," said Evans, an African American and former ward leader. "And they’re the ones who are the foot soldiers on the street. They’re predominantly African Americans, and they’re not the ones who are getting that TV money."

Hardscrabble neighborhoods across the city have come to depend on street money as a welcome payday for knocking on doors, handing out leaflets and speaking to voters as they arrive at polling places.

Peter Wilson, a ward leader from West Philadelphia, said: "Most of the ward leaders, we live in a very poor area, and people look forward to election days. . . . People are astute. They know the Obama campaign has raised millions of dollars."

Street money is an enduring political practice in Philadelphia and cities including Chicago, Baltimore, Newark and Los Angeles.

In Jon Corzine’s successful race in 2000 for the U.S. Senate, people from out of state poured into New Jersey to be part of a huge get-out-the-vote operation. Some were paid $75 apiece in street money, as part of the well-funded Corzine campaign’s election day efforts.

In the 2004 presidential race, John F. Kerry’s campaign paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in street money to Philadelphia’s Democratic apparatus, according to city party veterans.

A famous scene played out at a Democratic committee meeting during the 1980 presidential primary. Vice President Walter F. Mondale came to Philadelphia hoping to boost support for President Carter, then in a tough nomination fight with Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

Mondale made his pitch, touting Carter’s record on human rights and the economy.

In an interview Thursday, Mondale picked up the story from there:

"I finished my remarks, and the first person who stood up said: ‘Where’s the money?’ And I think he was talking about street money."

Dryly, Mondale added: "That was not the subject of my talk."

Before the 2002 state elections, a reporter watched two practitioners of the street-money arts in action: Campbell and U.S. Rep. Robert A. Brady, a ward leader and chair of Philadelphia’s Democratic committee.

Brady was sitting in his campaign office with two of his political lieutenants. He reached into a desk drawer at one point and pulled out a $50 bill — street money. Brady tore it in two and gave each man a half. Then the men made a bet: Whoever pulled in the most Democratic votes that day from his precincts would get both halves.

The night before that vote, Campbell, sitting at a kitchen table in a retirement community in West Philadelphia, spent hours passing out street money to various Democratic committee people. She kept receipts, working with stacks of cash. Campbell would give $10 to local teenagers assigned to put leaflets in doorways. And she paid out $100 to each of the committee people in her jurisdiction.

Ward leaders say such payments defray expenses such as food and gasoline, and compensate people for a grueling election day.

It is unclear to what extent Obama may suffer at the polls if any part of the city’s Democratic apparatus jumps to Clinton.

Obama’s strategy in Pennsylvania depends on a strong turnout in the city’s black precincts. That way, he can cut into the advantage Clinton has among older and blue-collar voters elsewhere in the state.

Campbell said she could not in good conscience ask people to work for Obama for free.

"I’m not going to do that," said Campbell, who heads a coalition of black ward leaders. "There are a lot of poor people here."

Paulmier said that of his ward’s 48 committee people, the vast majority supported Obama. Though he doesn’t expect a wholesale exodus to the Clinton campaign if no street money is paid, a handful of those key people might bolt, he said.

"If word gets out that the Clinton campaign is going to make . . . more support available to committee people, maybe five of the 48 might defect," he said.

With a week and a half left before the election, political leaders hope that Obama will relent.

Garry Williams, a ward leader based in north-central Philadelphia, said that he had not heard directly that the Obama campaign was withholding money. But he said payment would be needed. Workers who are in the field for Obama on April 22 will put in days stretching from 12 to 16 hours, he said.

"It’s our tradition," Williams said. "You don’t come to someone’s house and change the rules of someone’s house. That’s just respect."

(CNN) — Bill Clinton strongly defended his wife Thursday over the recent coverage surrounding her 1996 Bosnia trip claims, saying the media acted as if she’d "robbed a bank."

"I got tickled the other day, a lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me, but there was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995. Did y’all see all that? Oh, they blew it up," the former president said at a campaign event in Boonville, Indiana Thursday afternoon.

"You would have thought, you know, that she’d robbed a bank the way they carried on about this," he added. "And some of them when they’re 60 they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11 at night, too."

Controversy surrounded Clinton after video footage showed she did not land "under sniper fire" during her 1996 trip to Bosnia, despite making that claim on several occasions — most recently during a mid-morning address on March 17. Clinton later said she "misspoke" about the trip, and attributed the exaggerations to exhaustion.

"I have been in the public eye for many, many years, and this is something that I think happens to anybody," Clinton also said if the exaggeration which served to raise questions anew about her candor.

really… One time? really.

(CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton will stop telling an emotional story about a uninsured pregnant woman who died after being denied medical care, Clinton’s campaign said.

Sen. Hillary Clinton was repeating a story she heard from someone on the campaign trail.

A hospital has raised questions over the accuracy of the story, and Clinton’s campaign has said although they had no reason to doubt the story, they were unable to confirm the details.

In the story, Clinton describes a woman from rural Ohio who was making minimum wage at a local pizza shop. The woman, who was uninsured, became pregnant.

Clinton said the woman ran into trouble and went to a hospital in a nearby county but was denied treatment because she couldn’t afford a $100 payment.

In her speeches, Clinton said the woman later was taken to the hospital by ambulance and lost the baby. The young woman was then taken by helicopter to a Columbus hospital where she died of complications.

The New York senator heard the story during a campaign visit to a family’s living room in Pomeroy, Ohio, in late February. Bryan Holman was hosting the candidate and told Clinton the story. She has repeated it frequently since then.

As recently as Friday night in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Clinton said she was "just aching inside" as she was listening to the story.

"It is so wrong, in this good, great and rich country, that a young woman and her baby would die because she didn’t have health insurance or a hundred dollars to get examined," she said.

While Clinton never named the hospital in her speech, the woman she was referring to was treated at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. The hospital said the woman did indeed have insurance, and, at least at their hospital, she was never turned away.

Hospital Chief Executive Officer Rick Castrop in a statement said, "we reviewed the medical and patient accounts of the patient" after she was named in a newspaper story about Clinton’s stump speech.

"There is no indication that she was ever denied medical care at any time, for any reason. We clearly reject any perception that we ever denied any care to this woman."

A hospital spokesperson confirmed to CNN the woman had insurance. She said the hospital decided to come forward after people in the community began to question if they had denied her care.

Clinton’s speech accurately reflects what she was told that day, but the campaign admits they were not able to confirm the account.

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said, "She had no reason to doubt his word."

"Candidates are told stories by people all the time, and it’s common for candidates to retell those stories. It’s not always possible to fully vet them, but we try. For example, medical records are confidential. In this case, we tried but weren’t able to fully vet the story," he said.

"She never mentions the hospital by name and isn’t trying to cast blame. She tells this story because it illustrates the point that we have a very serious health care problem in America. That’s a point very few people will dispute."