Ever asked: 'Where can I get bobblehead dolls of my favourite political candidate?' Your search is over.

The good thing about this site, is that $5 for every purchase will be donated to the Kirsten Ann Carr Fund.

Dosen' t the John Kerry bobblehead remind you of Garry Trudeau and Robert Altman's fictitious candidate in 'Tanner '88'?

And still more hurdles for electronic voting....

Expect the President to also step up his targeting of the Nascar Dads....

John Edwards goes on the Late Show to deliver 'Top ten things a candidate never says', but it dosen't stop him getting into a row with Wall Street tycoon Wes Clark over veterans' benefits

So much for Janet Jackson.

A true cultural moment celebrates its fortieth anniversary.

A new poll from the AP shows Bush's approval rating slipping; falling below the key 50 per cent level, to the same level as his father's 12 years ago before he lost to Bill Clinton.

Plenty of debate today on whether the President is wise to go on Meet The Press this weekend. As Howard Kurtz says, it's a "roll of the dice".

Meanwhile, as John Kerry consolidates his lead in Michigan ahead of Saturday's caucuses, he might have some explaining to do to the automobile industry.

He also might find that the gay marriage ruling in his home state of Massachusetts might offer the GOP some ammunition, even though Kerry himself has disagreed with the decision.

Ah, the life of a front-runner. .. If the Letterman show's shot at the botox rumours wasn't enough, Republican campaign strategists are busy defining their line of attack against John Kerry after his performance in Tuesday's primares.

His remaining Democrat opponents, meanwhile, are working out how to best use their resources in upcoming contests, and how best to use an 'anti-Kerry' as opposed to an 'anti-Bush' message.

The president himself hits South Carolina amid growing concern about his ability to defuse the WMD/intel row.

As for this weekend's contests, Kerry has apparently tightened his grip on Michigan and Washington state.


John Edwards' southern strategy continues to emphasise Virginia - where he could pick up some backing from former supporters of Joe Lieberman - and Tennessee.

Wesley Clark, fresh from his victory in Oklahoma, is denying his campaign has run into money trouble, and is concentrating his fire on Washington insiders Kerry and Edwards.

Howard Dean, meanwhile, seems to be drawing a line in the snow in Wisconsin.

There's an interesting report out today from the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at GWU looking at the influence of online political activists in the campaign so far.

Here's an extract:

Online Political Citizens are not isolated cyber-geeks, as the media has portrayed them. On the contrary, OPCs are nearly seven times more likely than average citizens to serve as opinion leaders among their friends, relatives and colleagues.

OPCs are disproportionately “Influentials,” the Americans who “tell their neighbors what to buy, which politicians to support, and where to vacation,” according to Ed Keller and Jon Berry, authors of the book, The Influentials.

Normally, 10% of Americans qualify as Influentials.

Our study found that 69% of Online Political Citizens are Influentials. About 44% of Online Political Citizens have not been politically involved in the past in typical ways—they have not previously worked for a campaign, made a campaign donation or attended a campaign event.

Seven candidates, seven states, 269 delegates at stake.

John Edwards had made South Carolina his make or break contest, and the people of the Palmetto State stepped up for him, responding to his message of inclusion and his priorities of jobs and the economy, to deliver what appeared to be a comfortable victory over John Kerry with about half the precincts reporting.

Edwards had gotten a boost at the weekend with a Gallup poll that showed both he and Kerry would beat George W. Bush in a head-to-head contest, and Edwards' win tonight allows his supporters to reinforce the notion of their man supplanting Howard Dean as the legitimate second-place alternative to Kerry.

But Dean's not out yet. Despite not campaigning in any of tonight's states, the former Vermont Governor is confident of a strong showing in upcoming ballots in Michigan, Maine and Washington state.

For Kerry, who was in Seattle tonight as the results from elsewhere came in, apparently decisive wins in Missouri - the biggest prize of the evening in terms of delegates - and Delaware, together with strong showings everywhere else, allow him to carry his seemingly relentless momentum into the weekend's contests.

A Fox News exit poll in South Carolina showed that, while Edwards won his native state, Kerry was still outpolling him in terms of 'electability'. Also, interestingly, SC voters said that no matter who they had voted for tonight, they would be "satisfied" if Kerry turned out to be the eventual nominee.

The front-loaded process favours the candidate with momentum, and Kerry certainly has that at the moment. If he can turn in a solid showing in Arizona and New Mexico among the nation's fastest-growing electoral group, Latinos, it will reinforce his national viability.

And while Edwards is set to do well again in upcoming contests in Tennessee and Virginia, it may be that by the time March 2nd rolls around - with another raft of states including California and New York - Kerry's bandwagon could be unstoppable.

Of the other candidates, Gen Wesley Clark was in an early three-way tie for the lead in Oklahoma with Kerry and Edwards. Gen Clark intends to stick to his plan of going to Tennessee to campaign tomorrow.

Al Sharpton, who lost the support of many black voters to John Edwards in South Carolina, pledged that his campaign will go on regardless.

"I'll be at the Convention," he told CBS News, "if I have to walk from Brooklyn to Boston."

For Joe Lieberman, however, the clock may have all but run out.

Groundhog Day. More winter.

Almost as inevitable - another last-gasp victory for the Patriots.

A nice account of the front-runner's celebration from Ed O'Keefe of ABC News, quoted on The Note:

FARGO, N.D., Feb. 1 -- As the first half of Super Bowl XXXVIII drew to a close, Sen. Kerry turned back to the gathered crowd of Midwestern-turned-New Englanders and mouthed only two simple words: "Adam Vinatieri."

As the fourth quarter came near, the Patriots remained ahead yet still Kerry insisted, "This game will come down to Adam Vinatieri."

Indeed, with only eight seconds left on the clock, sitting in Playmaker's bar in Fargo, N.D., the Senator's prophecy about the South Dakota State University kicker became reality; Vinatieri stepped up, set, and, for the second time in three years, kicked the clutch field goal, again delivering a world championship to New England.

Kerry, tossing aside his barely touched Sam Adams bottleneck, jumped from his seat, raised both arms in the air and high-fived every native in sight.

Super Bowl Day. Pats against Cats. New England against Carolina. North against South. Kerry against Edwards. But while the southern pretender will be cheering the panthers and gladhanding the local fans at Super Bowl parties at two popular Charleston sports bars, Kerry will be watching from Fargo, North Dakota, before heading to New Mexico later this evening.

Maybe it had something to do with Patriots' quarterback Tom Brady being George Bush's special guest at the State of the Union...

The Dean campaign is feeling decidely less than super, since it's quickly running out of cash. A scenario almost unthinkable a couple of months ago, as almost every story written about the campaign was fawning over its remarkable success at raising cash on the internet, vindicating the decision to reject federal matching funds.

Meanwhile, the inevitable post-mortems on Dean's failure to win in Iowa and New Hampshire are asking whether the internet has truly changed the nature of political campaigning.

Two short, simplistic answers - firstly, it was mainly because of the internet that Dean got to play on the big stage at all, and secondly, his shortcomings were nothing to do with the technology; but those shortcomings were amplified and perpetuated by the very technology that had given him a ticket to the dance.

A key question is whether the "Deaniacs", the young voters galvanised by the Dean campaign into becoming politically active for the first time, will remain engaged with the process.

For Dean, and the other candidates seeking to put a roadblock in Kerry's increasingly relentless path to the nomination, the strategy now seems to be picking specific battlegrounds in the hope of preventing a sweep by the Massachusetts senator.