Slate's Delegate Calculator Shows Daunting Clinton Task Ahead.

Great use of web HERE.

Using sliders, user can see pledged delegate counts that would result from different Democratic primary election results in all of the remaining primary states.

Even with a highly unlikely scenario, Obama still ends up with more pledged delegates. The scenario and results:

• Clinton beats Obama by 60% to 40% in 4 primaries Ohio, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico AND by 54% to 46% in ALL of the other primaries.
• Clinton ends up with 1,599 pledged delegates, but Obama STILL has more pledged delegates at 1,610.
• Both are short of the 2,025 delegates needed--that's where super delegates would come into play.
  

Oregon Congresssional Delegation and Staff: Privately Financed Travel--Gordon and Earl In the Lead.

From Legistorm, shows all privately paid for member and staff trips and also includes link to show staff salaries paid. Free sign up allows you to view actual post disclosure form filed.

Note that many of these trips are from several years ago, but some are more current. Clicking on the column headings sort data by that column--so you sort the date column for example to see the most recent trips first.

Privately Paid for trips, and their source for all Oregon Reps and Senators can be found HERE in table format.

For the years covered, Senator Smith, and his staff lead with 97 approved trips taken at a cost of $190,000+, with Rep. Blumenhauer coming close,with a much smaller district, with 70 approved trips for $156,000+

Click on any individual Rep or Senator in left column to get more detailed information.

Democratic ELECTED Delegate Counts and Comparisons.

It is suprisingly difficult to find a breakout of elected delegate counts in the Democratic presidential contest. The Chicago Tribune Associated Press HERE has a breakout that shows total delegates, and super delegates, but NO count of the delegates elected in the primaries and caucuses.

SO.... I took the Feb 11, 2008 AP total delegate count and subtracted their super delegates to get a breakout of what I call elected delegates. The results of this comparison are available as a PDF HERE.

1. Obama leads in the count of elected delegates 952 to 893, a 12% lead.
   
2. Obama has a total of 20 states where he won the elected delegate count and Senator Clinton has 15 states where she won--i.e , he has won a third more states than she has.

For the record--I am an Obama supporter and contributor.