SCRANTON, PA– The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee came to her rival, Joe Biden’s hometown today and went after the native son for not supporting clean coal and off-shore drilling. Throughout her criticism of the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, a Palin supporter shouted, “Go Home Joe!” This is not a new attack, but it is the first time she has gone after him in the town he grew up in.

“Joe Biden had said that there is no such thing as clean coal when we talk about clean coal technology that is needed. He said–he said as a matter of fact even if there were clean coal, in an Obama administration it would be fine if China used it, but it wouldn’t be used here at home. Now that’s nonsense.” Palin said, “Biden also has called environmentally friendly offshore drilling he’s called it raping the outer continental shelf. Both he and Barack Obama have opposed off-shore drilling. Our opponents keep saying no to sound, responsible energy solutions and here again Americans will have a clear choice on November 4th.”

Joe Biden was last in Scranton on Sunday–at the same venue–stumping for his ticket with the Clintons. Hillary Clinton’s family also hails from this Rust Belt town.

Palin is referring to comments Biden made on the ropeline last month in Maumee, Ohio where the Democratic nominee told an environmental activist who asked him why coal is necessary given alternatives such as solar and wind, “We’re not supporting clean coal.”

But, Biden has clarified his statement saying he does believe in investing in clean coal technology and he always did he just meant that he’s not supporting it over other, cleaner alternatives.

At her rally, Palin praised her running mate’s new economic plan launched today and said it will help families “keep their homes and save failing neighborhoods and bring stability to our housing market.”

“So just this morning John McCain set forth a plan to help those who have been hardest hit in this economic crisis. Our pension and family security plan. This is going to get our country through a time of testing. And it’s going to get the economy back on the right track. Under this plan, we will help American families keep their homes and save failing neighborhoods and bring stability to our housing market.”

Palin will now travel to New York to meet up with John McCain for a fundraiser in New York sure to bring in high dollar donations for the GOP ticket.

NEW YORK—Former President Bill Clinton opened up his Global Initiative’s annual meeting today and introduced John McCain who delivered the opening remarks.

Clinton had high praise for the GOP nominee pointing out that his wife and McCain took a congressional delegation on a climate change fact-finding mission to Alaska and the Arctic Circle. Clinton referred to McCain’s running mate Sarah Palin when he mentioned Alaska, but not by name:

“I want to say one thing in particular about John McCain in bringing him out here. When most people in his party were thinking that global warming was overstated and maybe even admit designed to let people like me who love solar and wind get into it. He decided to look into it and everyone of us by the way with every thorny problem we face need to be in the looking into it business and he and the Junior Senator from New York, with whom I have a passing acquaintance took 2 astonishing trips. One to your state to the point barrel of Alaska, the northern most community in the United States,” Clinton said referring to Palin, “where the Eskimos told them they thought their way of life was coming to an end because of changes in the climate and one to the northern most settlement on Planet Earth. It’s on an island 600 miles north of Norway above the Arctic Circle where they study the changes in the planet where there were signs on their cabin don’t go out at night without a gun or a light or the polar bears will eat you.”

Clinton pressed that McCain’s work on global warming was not to score political points, “The point I want to make is there were any votes on this in Arizona. He just wanted to know and they dragged along some very skeptical Republican senators who now are prepared to vote for some kind of bipartisan legislation which will put America in a position to be a part of what is coming up by 2010 which is figuring out where we go next in the struggle against climate change. That’s what we want from everybody. We want some of us to be on the left, some of us to be on the right but all of us to want to know,” Clinton said. “John McCain wants to know and I am profoundly grateful to him coming here today.”

The former President also thanked both Palin and Cindy McCain for attending CGI and praised Cindy for her humanitarian work in Rwanda.

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President Bill Clinton lavished some praise on Sarah Palin today, calling her an “instinctively effective candidate” who cannot be underestimated.

During an interview with CNBC that aired Thursday, the former president repeated that he supports the Obama-Biden ticket and disagrees with McCain-Palin on many issues, but was still extremely complimentary of the Alaska Governor.

Asked if he was surprised by the bounce McCain saw in the polls after selecting Palin, Clinton disagreed.

“No, she is an instinctively effective candidate with a compelling story and I think it was exciting to some that she was a woman that she is from Alaska,” Clinton said. “And she grew up and came up in a political and religious culture that is probably well to the right of the American center but she didn’t basically define herself in those terms. She said ‘this is where I am from, I am not going to impose this on you, this is what I want to do that I think we can all be a part of.’”

He added: “She handled herself well so no, I wasn’t surprised. I think that you know I disagree with them on many issues and that’s why aside from my party affiliation I would be for Obama and Biden anyway but I get why she has done so well. It would be a mistake to underestimate her…her intuitive skills are significant.”

South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn tells Fox News that he’s not surprised that Bill Clinton blames him for undercutting his reputation with black voters after the Democratic primaries — but that Clinton is himself to blame for any damage he might have incurred.

Clinton told ABC News last week that Clyburn “used to be” a long time friend of his, and that Clyburn “was not Hillary’s supporter. Never. Not ever. Not for a day.” Informed that Clyburn had said that the former president’s credibility with the black community had been damaged, Clinton responded “That may be by the time he got through working on it, that was probably true.”

Clyburn was a forceful critic of President Clinton’s campaign tactics during the South Carolina primary, calling Clinton’s comments — including his claim that he was having the race card played on him - “bizarre.”

“Black people are incensed over all of this,” Clyburn said at the time, adding that African Americans had come to a near unanimous conclusion that the Clintons were “committed to doing everything they possibly can to damage Obama to a point that he could never win.”

In an interview with James Rosen, Clyburn said President Clinton “is not correct in his conclusions” about his feelings towards Clinton’s wife, claiming that while his heart had been with Obama, his head had been with Hillary. Clyburn officially endorsed Obama just before the end of the process in June — but made his leanings clear throughout the process.

As for whether Clinton feels Clyburn undermined him with black voters, the congressman said “that’s easily to be understood from his comments, and I just beg to differ with that. Because the fact of the matter is, all the stuff that I saw reported were reports on things the President said from his own mouth.”

Clyburn specifically pionted to Clinton’s comparison of Obama’s win in SC to Jesse Jackson’s 20 years earlier - where Jackson won the black vote and not much else on the way to losing the Democratic nomination to Michael Dukakis.

“Most people thought that the most telling thing back in January was the equation that the president made of Jesse Jackson having won South Carolina caucuses 20 years earlier, and compared that with Obama winning the South Carolina primary. there’s a big difference in a caucus and a primary,” said Clyburn. “Irrespective of what the president may have meant by the statement, a lot of people interpreted that as having a racial connotation, and Jim Clyburn didn’t speak on that issue at all.”

As for whether Clinton did, in fact, hurt himself among black voters, Clyburn said “i don’t know that i’ve done any surveys to determine whether or not the president, former president has ever damaged himself or not.” What does his gut tell him? “My gut tells me that some things I ought to keep to myself.”

Relevant sections of Rosen’s interview and Bill Clinton’s comments to ABC are below.

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President Bill Clinton said that he is willing to campaign for Senator Barack Obama “whenever he asks” adding that they had a “good talk” and that Obama requested the former President’s assistance,

“He said he wanted me to campaign with him and I said I was eager to do so,” Clinton told reporters, “But he is busier than I am on politics anyway so I just told him whenever he wanted to do it I was ready. So it is basically on their timetable. He’s got a lot of things to do between now and the convention of which this is simply one. So I will do whatever I’m asked to do whenever I can do it. “

Clinton came under fire for releasing only a brief statement of support for the Democratic nominee-in-waiting at the end of June stating that he was, “obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States.”

Clinton said he had “given no thought” to whether he wanted to speak at the Democratic National Convention where his wife is expected to give a speech at a prominent time slot.

Clinton was also asked about the recent Jesse Jackson incident where Jackson was caught saying crude and disparaging comments about Obama on an open microphone while he was preparing to tape a segment on the Fox News Channel.

Even though he hasn’t spoken with Jackson, he said that his swift apology was “a good thing” to do and had praise for the civil rights leader, “He was big enough to quickly apologize and if all of us lived on live mics then 100 percent of us in this room would be embarrassed from time to time,” Clinton chuckled, “ He’s a good man and he did what he could to make it right and I think we all know where his heart is on everything involving equal opportunity for people without regard to race and helping poor people in America and throughout the world and I think Senator Obama accepted his apology. I think its over.”

Clinton held the press conference to announce an initiative between his foundation and six drug companies to dramatically lower the price of malaria medications in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. His foundation has already worked to bring down the cost of HIV/AIDS drugs on these continents and the initiative has now expanded to malaria drugs.

The United Nations Special Envoy on Malaria and several representatives from the drug companies joined the former President at the press conference. Clinton also praised President Bush and Congress for passing Bush’s Malaria budget:

“I think it would be a mistake on all of our parts not to acknowledge the fact that the United States Senate has recently and overwhelmingly passed the President’s malaria budget and that we owe a debt of gratitude to the President and Congress for supporting this because it will enable the funds to go out across the world so that even at these reduced prices we will have countries able to purchase the medicines and get it out there to save all these lives.”

Each year 500 million people contract Malaria, and more than one million die from the disease, many of them children.

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Barack Obama says Charlie Black was wrong to say that a terrorist attack would help John McCain in November; that he spoke to Hillary Clinton today and is trying to reach out to her husband; and that Christian leader James Dobson distorted his words on religion in a wide ranging media availability in the back of his press plane.

Obama wandered back to speak to reporters in the middle of a flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles for an informal bull session with reporters — a tactic encouraged by his campaign as a way to counter an aloof image he’s cultivated with his traveling press corps. But after asking about basketball, gambling, and the trinkets from voters he carries with him, reporters pressed him on the record on whether he’s spoken with the ex-president who so often belittled him on the campaign trail.

“I’m sure we will,” said Obama. “He’s in Europe right now which is the only reason we haven’t spoken. But were looking forward to setting up a long conversation.” Obama praised the former president as a great strategist who’s “as smart as they come.” But Clinton’s commitment to campaigning for Obama has come into question, so much so that a spokesman for the ex-president had to release a statement reaffirming his support for the Illinois Senator.

Obama also accused Focus on the Family leader James Dobson of twisting a speech on religion he gave in 2006. On his radio program today, Dobson took aim at Obama’s argument that certain Biblical passages shouldn’t be taken as guides for public policy — saying “I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology… He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

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Hillary Clinton welcomed her entire campaign staff to a party at her home in Georgetown today, hosting about 500 people in the back yard by the swimming pool. All morning, workers brought tables, food, and bags of ice through the side gate, assisted by Secret Service agents. Valets helped park cars to keep them off the quiet one-way street.

Guests began arriving at 2pm. Dressed in khakis and a white blouse, Hillary Clinton greeted them in the back, mingling and saying her thank you’s along with her husband. Chelsea was there for the kick-off, but left with two staff members to thank Clinton supporters in Texas at the state’s Democratic convention tonight.

National campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe stopped by to say hi to reporters staked out outside the house, saying Hillary’s feeling great since she got off the trail. As for what’s next? “She will do anything she can to help Barack Obama,” he said. “If he wants her to travel every day, she’ll do that.”

McAuliffe wouldn’t discuss the meeting between Clinton and Barack Obama last night, but did say tomorrow’s address at the National Building Museum would be “a great speech, it will be pumped up” — and while focusing on Party unity, she would be zeroing in on issues like health care and education.

“This was never about Hillary Clinton,” he said. “This was about the issues that matter to her.”

NEW YORK–After spending almost every day of the past several months campaigning for his wife, President Bill Clinton returned to his charitable work today. He spoke to members of the business world about corporate philanthropy and asked members of the community to engage in more acts of charity.

In a small room in midtown Manhattan, Clinton addressed the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy covering domestic and world issues his Global Initiative is focused on like poverty, health care, and climate change.

There was absolutely no hint at when his wife may withdraw from the race or if she will continue to fight on until the Democratic convention. He actually only mentioned his wife once when telling those gathered of a man she met on the campaign trail who drives and works on hybrid car technology. President Clinton got some laughs when he re-told their conversation to the group, “Hillary ran into one of these guys and asked me to call him and she said I want to talk about this but I don’t want to be embarrassed. Call him and figure out if he’s telling the truth.”

He spent a portion of his over hour-long speech talking about agricultural productivity and food aid around the world. He praised President Bush on distribution of food aid and made the point of mentioning twice that the President has not had support or received credit from Congress on this issue, “If you look at what could be done to increase agricultural productivity I think the number one proposal made by the Bush administration which I think the President has not enough credit and almost no support in the Congress from either party is to change the way we give food aid.”

He went on to describe the Bush policy, which splits food distribution between the needy and also gives cash to the farmers closest to the famine-affected areas.

He also discussed problems facing the country that have been hot topics this election season including the economy, health care, and soaring education debt for some students. As he often did on the trail, he compared today’s troubles to the country during his time in office:

“The vast majority of families would be in a recession because they have had one day more than six months of negative economic growth and if you look at the fact that we have had median after inflation income is 1,000 dollars lower today than the day I left office, while health care costs have doubled,” Clinton said, “At any given time in the year about 100 million will be without health care and the cost of a college education is up 75 percent. The average debt of a college graduate is 50 percent higher than it was at the beginning of this decade. You see that there are fair amount of inequality problems in America and climate change affects us all.”

Much to the press’s chagrin, there was also no mention of his late night at his wife’s speech-where she did not concede the election as some thought she may and instead celebrated her South Dakota win nor a reference to her rival Barack Obama receiving the number of delegates to become the Democratic nominee-in waiting.

Click below to watch part of President Clinton’s speech:

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The Huffington Post gets an up close and personal rant from former President Bill Clinton on last weekend’s Vanity Fair piece describing his negative effect on his wife’s campaign — and calling it another example of the media trying to nail the nomination for Obama.

Working the rope line at an event in South Dakota, Clinton was asked by Off The Bus reporter Mayhill Fowler — who brought the world Barack Obama’s “bitter” comments in San Francisco — what he thought of the piece. She reports that Clinton called writer Todd Purdum “sleazy,” “dishonest,” “slimy,” and a “scumbag.

“There’s just five or six blatant lies in there,” though he admitted he hadn’t read the article. “He’s a real slimy guy.”

Clinton’s office put out a lengthy rebuttal to the piece on Sunday, claiming Purdum was merely spreading rumors about womanizing and temper flare-ups without naming his sources or properly verifying his information.

On the rope line, Clinton complained of those same issues to Fowler. “You know he didn’t use a single name, cite a single source in all those things he said. It’s just slimy,” he said. “It’s part of the national media’s attempt to nail Hillary for Obama. It’s the most biased press coverage in history. It’s another way of helping Obama.”

“They had all these people standing up in this church cheering, calling Hillary a white racist, and he didn’t do anything about it. The first day he said ‘Ah, ah, ah well.’ Because that’s what they do– he gets other people to slime her. So then they saw the movie they thought this is a great ad for John McCain– maybe I better quit the church. It’s all politics. It’s all about the bias of the media for Obama. Don’t think anything about it,” Clinton continued.

“But I’m telling ya, all it’s doing is driving her supporters further and further away– because they know exactly what it is– this has been the most rigged coverage in modern history– and the guy ought to be ashamed of himself. But he has no shame.”

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton spokeman Jay Carson, who once worked for the former president, says “President Clinton was understandably upset about an outrageously unfair article, but the language today was inappropriate and he wishes he had not used it.”

The end-of-the-campaign symbolism quotient was high in Yankton, SD today, where Hillary and Chelsea Clinton campaigned in a high school cafeteria in a last ditch effort to gin up one more win before the primary process is over.

First, Clinton thanked the wrong mayor.

“I also want to acknowledge your mayor, Curt Bernard,” she said. Instant muttering, head-shaking, and scattered boos from the citizenry. Clinton leaned down as someone told her her screw-up. “Dan Specht! I’ve got the wrong list,” she said. “Mr Mayor, it’s great to be with you. I don’t know who the other gentleman is, but I hope I haven’t offended him.”

Turns out, the other gentleman WAS the mayor of Yankton — 6 months ago, when the unpopular official was kicked out of office by the city commission.

Adding injury to insult, Clinton’s voice gave out not once, but twice - a circumstance she blamed on her marathon 7-hour caravan extravaganza in Puerto RIco on Saturday.

Chelsea ably filled in for her ailing mom, discussing the NY Senator’s health care plan during the first round of her bout with her vocal chords, and going into energy and infrastructure policy when the elder Clinton was force to go backstage and gargle to defeat the problem.

The whole situation wasn’t helped by what Clinton called an “echo-ey” sound system that had both the senator and her daughter talking as though they were on quaaludes.

Clinton did get a new electoral message out before her voice gave out — outlining a post-primary campaign strategy.” Tomorrow is the last day of the primaries, and the beginning of a new phase in the campaign,” she said. “The voters will have voted, and so the decision will fall to the delegates empowered to vote at the Democratic convention. And I will be spending the coming days making my case to those delegates.”

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