Hillary Clinton Quickly Losing Lustre for Democrats

THE first vote is still more than a year away, but the campaign to replace President George W Bush in the White House is already throwing up surprises.

Unfortunately for Senator Hillary Clinton, long the front-runner in the Democratic drive to retake the presidency, most of them are coming at her expense.

A brace of Christmas opinion polls has left Clinton with a political hangover after a year that had appeared to cement her status as the Democrats’ best-organised, best-financed and best-connected contender for her party’s presidential nomination.

Despite winning re-election to the US Senate by a handsome margin in mid-term voting last month, Clinton has had little to celebrate as polls from the presidential primary battlegrounds signalled early trouble for her historic bid to become America’s first woman president.

In Iowa, the Midwestern state that will once again open the primary season with its caucus votes on January 14, 2008, Clinton slumped to fourth place with only 10% of the vote in a survey of 600 likely Democratic voters.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2524263,00.html

**BIG BAZOO's take: Santa must have noticed who was naughty...tsk..tsk...Hillary is a dour person and unelectable candidate!!......If her only hope is an 11th hour charm offensive...well... that's an oxymoron of the highest order...Her chickens have come home to roost...we predict a future fore Hillary much like that of Ted 'Chappiquidick' Kennedy....long-term liberal icon...derided by most of the United States as an out-of-touch cretin!!

hillary+clinton presidential+bid white+house 2008+election new+york

Islamist Forces in Somali City Vanish

*RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE*

NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec. 27 — The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away.

In the past few days, Ethiopian-backed forces, with tacit approval from the United States, have unleashed tanks, helicopter gunships and jet fighters on the Islamists, decimating their military and paving the way for the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia to assert control.

Even so, the Islamists, who have been regarded as a regional menace by Ethiopia and the United States, had repeatedly vowed to fight to the death for their religion and their land, making their disappearance that much more unexpected.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/world/africa/28somalia.html?th&emc=th

**BIG BAZOO's take: As we have asserted all along....there is no language understood by the fanatical Islamo-Zombies better than brute and iron-fisted force......The sooner the world understands this basic tenet in the War On Terror, the sooner we can wipe out the bad guys!...There is no such thing as an antiseptic war with little collateral damage....trying to fight wars in these way...only leads to the deaths of our valiant, patriot warriors in the US Military....We should treat Sadr City the way the Allies treated Dresden Germany in WW2!!

somalia islamists mogadishu islam war+on+terror africa terrorists ethiopia