LORETTO,  KENTUCKY  -   Sen.  Hillary Clinton, campaigning in rural Kentucky, on Saturday blasted critics telling her to drop out of the presidential race as America’s advantaged and well-heeled trying to tell the rest of the nation what to think and do.

“All those people on TV who are telling you and everybody else that this race is over and I should just be graceful and say, ‘Oh, it’s over,’” she said in Loretto, Kentucky. “Those are all people who have a job. Those are all people who have health care. Those are all people who can afford to send their kids to college. Those are all people who can pay whatever is charged at the gas pump.

“They’re not the people I’m running to be a champion for,” she said after touring a bourbon distillery. “I’m running to be a champion for all of you and your children and your grandchildren.”

Clinton, facing calls to quit in favor of Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama, has adopted a populist appeal in her bid for her party’s presidential nomination, especially as she has sought support in the rural Midwest and South.

As her campaign accused Obama of being an elitist, she drank a shot of whiskey before a crowd of photographers, posed with the driver of a large pickup truck to oppose high gas prices and campaigned at a farm equipment dealership and an auto race car hall of fame.

Recent primaries have shown Clinton faring better among voters with less education and less income in rural areas than Obama who is doing better among more affluent, more educated voters in more urban areas.

Later on Saturday, at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Clinton continued in the same vein.

“I think we have a problem because too often, folks who are sitting in Washington or on TV sets tell people what you’re supposed to think and what you’re supposed to do,” she said, “and I don’t believe that’s the best way that America can work. The strength of America comes from our people.”

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Photo: Reuters/Chris Keane (Clinton supporter in West Virginia )

 SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Former South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee and longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, revealed on Friday a key reason why he switched his support in this year’s primary election from the former first lady to Barack Obama.
 
McGovern, 85, told an Obama rally with some 7,000 people in South Dakota that he shifted allegiance because the Illinois senator had an insurmountable lead in the nomination race.
 
But that wasn’t the only reason.
 
“I have three daughters and one son and 10 grandchildren, and after I endorsed Senator Clinton, all 14 of them enlisted in the Obama campaign,” he said, joking that that showed the measure of influence he had in his own home.

McGovern said the Clintons would remain treasured friends and praised them for having “worked their hearts out” for his own 1972 presidential bid.
 
Now, however, was the time to coalesce around Obama, who is leading in votes and delegates required to determine the party’s White House nominee to face Republican John McCain in the November election, he said.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Andy Clark (McGovern at a reunion of Vietnam War draft dodgers in Castlegar, British Columbia, July 8, 2006)

WATERTOWN, South Dakota - Democratic front-runner Barack Obama says President George W. Bush made an “outrageous political attack” when he told the Israeli parliament that those who want to talk to Iran are similar to Nazi appeasers before the Second World War.

Although Bush never mentioned Obama by name, the Illinois senator, who has called for talks with Iran and other hostile governments, told supporters in South Dakota on Fridayit was an attack on him and other Democrats.

“The president did something that presidents don’t do,” he told a crowd of some 2,100 in South Dakota. “And that is launch a political attack targeted toward the domestic market in front of a foreign delegation.”

Bush’s comments, made in Jerusalem on Thursday during celebrations for Israel’s 60th anniversary, stirred up the campaign for the November election and drew sharp responses from Democrats, including New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Obama responded to Bush’s remarks on Thursday, but a spokeswoman said he decided to address them again because he felt they were outrageous since they were made while abroad.

She also said he wanted a forceful response to make sure Swift Boat-style attacks were not allowed to stand, a reference to the ad campaign that damaged Democrat John Kerry in the 2004 election.

The White House has expressed bafflement at the anger of the Democratic response, saying Bush had been making similar statements for years.

“On a day when we were supposed to be celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s independence, he accused me and other Democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists, and said we were ‘appeasers’ - no different from people who appeased Adolf Hitler,” Obama said.

“That’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that has divided our country, and that alienates us from the world.”

Obama went on to criticize presumptive Republican nominee John McCain for embracing Bush’s comments shortly after giving a speech about elevating civility in politics.

“So much for civility,” Obama said, adding he was ready to debate McCain and Bush over how to best protect the country.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (Bush speaks to Israeli parliament)

RAPID CITY, S.D. - Sen. Hillary Clinton said on Thursday the endorsement by former presidential contender John Edwards might help her rival Barack Obama but added that the support of voters carries more weight.

Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina who gave up his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in January, on Wednesday threw his support behind Obama, the Democratic front-runner.

“I have a great deal of respect for Sen. Edwards, and he and I have a lot in common,” Clinton told reporters at a news conference in Rapid City, South Dakota.

“I imagine that Sen. Edward’s endorsement will be of some help to Sen. Obama in Kentucky, but I think that what matters is the people who actually vote,” she said.

Kentucky, which lies about 150 miles northwest of the North Carolina state line, holds its primary on Tuesday.

Clinton said she had not spoken to Edwards, who often criticized her over the issue of accepting donations from lobbyists and special interest groups, since he endorsed Obama.

However, she said she has spoken to his wife Elizabeth Edwards, who has not endorsed any candidate.

“She’s a friend of mine and I have a very high regard for her,” Clinton said. She declined to disclose what they discussed.

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Photo: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Obama, Clinton and Edwards in Columbia, South Carolina)

WASHINGTON - White House hopeful John McCain tangled with reporters on Thursday over whether he offered a “timetable” when he delivered a speech in Ohio predicting victory in Iraq and the return home of most U.S. troops by 2013.

The presumptive Republican nominee pushed back in particular at one journalist’s suggestion that the speech took listeners on a “magic carpet ride” into the future.

In the Columbus, Ohio speech, McCain used a literary device of sorts to describe what he hoped to accomplish in his first four years in office, not only Iraq but on other issues.

“What I want to do today is take a little time to describe what I would hope to have achieved at the end of my first term as president,” the Arizona senator said.

Iraq was the first subject McCain discussed.

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq war has been won,” he said.

McCain later said the economy at the end of his first four years in office would be “robust” and Americans will see improvement on issues like health care and education.

Reporters traveling with McCain on his campaign bus pressed him on whether the discussion of troops coming home from Iraq in 2013 amounted to a timetable. McCain has criticized his Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who have each said they would begin an Iraq pullout shortly after taking office if elected.

McCain has said such timetables were a recipe for defeat and that troop changes should be governed by conditions on the ground. But he was adamant his speech did not offer a timetable.

“It’s not a timetable. It’s victory, which I have always predicted,” McCain said.

After several rounds of questioning on that issue, one reporter said McCain was essentially asking listeners to his speech to “go on this magic carpet ride to 2013″ — a description the senator rejected.

“First of all I don’t view it, if you’ll excuse me, as a ‘quote’ magic carpet ride,” he said. “I don’t think it has anything to do with fantasy. I think it has to do with setting goals and achieving them.”

But that didn’t stop critics from pouncing on the speech, including one analyst, Les Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations who said the predictions were from “la la land.”

Gelb said McCain’s expectation of democracy and stability in Iraq by 2013 was “wild-eyed” and “unsupported.”

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Photo: Reuters/Richard Clement - Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain speaks to employees  in front of a wind turbine model at the Vestas Wind Technology plant in Portland, Oregon on May 12.

WASHINGTON - House of Representatives Republican Leader John Boehner says he has no plans to alter a new campaign slogan — “Change you deserve” — that has been widely mocked since the phrase is used to market the anti-depressant drug Effexor.

“I think it’s working out just fine,” a smiling Boehner told reporters when asked about the slogan that has become the butt of jokes on Capitol Hill.

The slogan is part of a new effort by House Republicans “to fix Washington,” outline plans to help Americans and raise their floundering election-year prospects of retaking control of the legislative body from Democrats.

“Democrats, not drugs, is what the American people need,” House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer said in poking fun at the campaign and antidepressant slogan.

Some Republicans have also complained, saying privately that the slogan makes them look foolish.

Others, like Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, say, “Another slogan doesn’t do much. People are more concerned about what we do.”

“We have to be bolder than this. If we don’t, we will get the change we deserve.” Flake said.

With polls showing voters favor Democrats on a host of issues, they are expected to increase their House majority in the November elections. This week, Democrats won their third straight special election to fill a vacant seat in a previously Republican district, raising their House majority to 236-199.

Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, a former chairman of the House Republican campaign committee, wrote colleagues: “The loss of three straight special elections … are canaries in the coal mine, warning of far greater losses in the fall, if steps are not taken to remedy the current climate.”

Boehner said of the Davis memo: “I frankly thought it was well done, rather insightful, and really laid out the challenge that we face.” 

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Darren Staples (another anti-depressant medication.)

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush stirred up the U.S. presidential campaign Thursday by suggesting that Democratic front-runner Barack Obama’s pledge to talk to Iran’s leader amounted to “the false comfort of appeasement.”

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Bush said in a speech to the Israeli parliament marking Israel’s 60th anniversary.

Without mentioning Obama by name, he compared “this foolish delusion” to the appeasement of the Nazis ahead of World War Two. 

“As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement,” Bush said.

The remark drew swift response from Obama, who argues the United States blunders by refusing to talk to the leaders of hostile nations like Iran, Syria and Cuba.

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack,” Obama said.

“The president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel,” he said.

Republican candidate John McCain criticized Obama’s pledge to speak directly to U.S. foes, saying “it shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment” to consider sitting down with a country like Iran that wants to destroy Israel. “My question is, what does he want to talk about?” McCain said.

Not everyone in Bush’s administration is opposed to talking to Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered his own ideas just a day before the president’s Knesset speech, telling a diplomatic forum: “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them.”

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COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he would take a page from the British government if elected and hold question-and-answer sessions with lawmakers.

“I will ask Congress to grant me the privilege of coming before both houses to take questions, and address criticism, much the same as the prime minister of Great Britain appears regularly before the House of Commons,” McCain told an audience Thursday.

Although U.S. presidents deliver annual “State of the Union” speeches to Congress at the start of each year, those formal addresses do not include a question-and-answer session.

McCain says exchanges like the sometimes raucous sessions in the British House of Commons are a way of holding leaders’ feet to the fire.

“When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them,” McCain said. He also reiterated a pledge to hold weekly news conferences, a change from President George W. Bush’s practice of holding them roughly once a month.

Is it a good idea to give lawmakers a chance to pepper the U.S. president with questions on a regular basis?

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Photo credit: Reuters/Richard Clement (McCain speaks in Oregon)

CHICAGO - Barack Obama is wearing a flag pin again. The Illinois senator and Democratic presidential candidate has been accused of being unpatriotic for declining to wear the American flag on his lapel, which he stopped doing out of an objection to hypocrisy in some politicians. 

But this week it reappeared, and Obama said veterans felt it was important that he had one on.

“I started wearing it again at that veterans event because once again I had been handed a flag pin by a veteran who said it was important,” he told reporters on his campaign plane during a flight to Chicago.

“This is an issue that is a phony issue because I was never opposed to wearing flag pins.”

He said giving up the flag pin in the first place was a commentary on hypocritical lawmakers.

“It was a commentary on our politicians and folks in Washington who sometimes are very good about saluting our soldiers when they come home but then don’t follow up with budgets that make sure that they’re getting treatment for post traumatic stress disorder,” he said.

“So it was a commentary about our politics, not about, you know, individuals who wear the flag with pride.”    

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican presidential candidate John McCain says he knows he has some work to do to repair his party’s image with U.S. voters and he wants to start by pushing his pledge to rein in government spending.

McCain told reporters on Wednesday there was no doubt the Republican brand had fallen out of favor and said a series of special election defeats for the party recently underscored that.

“We have to re-energize our base,” the Arizona senator told reporters during a visit to a recycling plant near Columbus.

McCain said a key priority will be to show voters that he is committed to lean budgets. McCain is also trying to court independent voters by pushing more moderate policies than President George W. Bush on some issues such as the environment.

“We need to most of all … stop the out-of-control spending, be committed again to being careful stewards of the American people’s tax dollars,” McCain said. A run-up in spending on Bush’s watch is one of the reasons the president has lost some support among Republicans. Bush’s approval rating is at roughly 30 percent in many surveys, close to an all-time low.

On Tuesday, Democrat Travis Childers won a U.S. House of Representatives seat in Mississippi, in an election that was seen as a warning sign for Republicans that the unpopularity of Bush and the Iraq war may pose difficulties for the party in November, both in the presidential race and in congressional elections.

Childers defeated Greg Davis in a run-off to fill a vacant seat in Mississippi’s first congressional district. Vice President Dick Cheney had campaigned against Childers and Republican ads tried to link him to Democratic presidential front-runner Barack Obama, viewed by many Mississippians as too liberal.

(Rep. Thomas Davis of Virginia, former chairman of the House Republican  campaign committee, wrote in a letter to House Republican leaders after the Mississippi loss, “The Republican brand is in the trash can.”)

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” McCain said. “I have a lot of work to do. I understand the challenge. I’m confident at the end of the day that my vision and plan for action for this nation will gain a majority of the votes. But I have no illusions.” 
 
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Photo: Reuters/Richard Clement - Republican presidential candidate Sen.John McCain addresses employees at the Vestas Wind Technology plant in Portland, Oregon May 12, 2008.