$109.2 million.

I was going to put in an exclamation point, except I expected the Clintons' income would be somewhere around there.

Bill Clinton made more than $29 million writing books!!!...I wonder if his agent is accepting new clients.

News item:

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton made fun of herself Thursday, telling "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno she almost didn't make it to his studio.

"It is so great to be here, I was so worried I wasn't going to make it. I was pinned down by sniper fire," Clinton said after joining him onstage, referring to her claims - since disputed - that she dodged sniper bullets while arriving in Bosnia as first lady. Clinton later said she had "misspoke."

See, now don't you feel silly and a bit embarrassed for thinking it was a serious matter when a leading presidential candidate lied in a prepared, televised speech on one of the key issues in the race: Foreign policy experience.

Sucker -- you probably believed the pundits back in '01 when they said "the age of irony is over," didn't you? Because apparently there's no campaign flaw too deep -- or no "misstatement" too great -- that it can't be made to disappear, just by going on "Saturday Night Live" or Leno and making a joke about it.

If only past presidents and candidates had learned this trick that Hillary Clinton has mastered, just imagine how the course of American history might have changed.

From May 1974:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Embattled president Richard M. Nixon seems to have finally put the worst of the Watergate scandal behind him after his highly-rated appearance with late-night funnyman Johnny Carson in which he and the host of NBC's "Tonight Show" traded quips about the 18-minute gap in the White House tapes, H.R. Haldeman's crew-cut, and the secret bombing of Cambodia.

The biggest yuks came when Carson leaned over and said, "With all due respect, Mr. President, what's really on that tape that your secretary accidentally erased?"

Replied Nixon: "I can finally tell the nation that....", and he continued to move his lips for about 45 seconds without uttering a sound, as the audience roared its approval.

Asked by Carson why he agreed to go on the late-night comedy show, Nixon replied: "Because you are completely nuts -- and we ought to know, because we just burglarized your psychiatrist's office!"

From Sept. 1931:

PITTSBURGH (UPI): President Herbert Hoover cheered up a Depression-weary nation Wednesday night with a surprise cameo appearance on the J. "Muggs" Lennow "Laff Hour" on radio station KDKA, where he made light of the GOP's famous, failed promise to "put a chicken in every pot and a car in every backyard."

"Did we really say that?" Hoover laughed. "We meant we were going to put pot in every chicken!" -- an apparent allusion to the newly popular form of music known as "jazz."

"I hate to run, but my presidential limo is parked out on Prosperity -- just around the corner," the president joked. "Brother, can you spare a dime...for the meter."

Pundits expect that -- despite the sluggish economy -- the likability factor should easily propel Hoover to a second term over likely Democratic nominee Franklin Roosevelt, the New York governor who has tended to bore audiences with his long-winded policy prescriptions for building lots of dams and giving money to old people.

From June 1863:

LAUGH OFFENSIVE President calms nation weary of civil war with good humour

From our Washington correspondent -- President Abraham Lincoln made a most surprising appearance at the Ford Theater last night, where he interrupted a performance of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to make remarks of great humour and wit about the recent battlefield carnage and other affairs of state.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand...and neither can General Grant, if you've ever tried to meet with him any time after 11 a.m.," said Lincoln, much to the merriment of the assembly. When another joke fell flat on its face, the 16th president quipped: "Hey, I can suspend your writ of habeas corpus, too!"

But seriously, folks, I'm wondering how Americans ever elected a president before "SNL" arrived to put it all in the proper perspective for us.

Honestly, if Obama showed up at his next rally dressed exactly like this, it probably STILL wouldn't be enough for the likes of Time's Joe Klein, who's here to tell us:

But there was still something missing. I noticed it during Obama's response to a young man who remembered how the country had come together after Sept. 11 and lamented "the dangerously low levels of patriotism and pride in our country, the loss of faith in our elected officials." Obama used this, understandably, to go after George W. Bush. "Cynicism has become the hot stock," he said, "the growth industry during the Bush Administration." He talked about the Administration's mendacity, its incompetence during Hurricane Katrina, its lack of transparency. But he never returned to the question of patriotism. He never said, "But hey, look, we're Americans. This is the greatest country on earth. We'll rise to the occasion."

Well, if that doesn't prove he's the Manchurian candidate, Klein adds:

"In this campaign, we will not stand for the politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon," he said on the night that he lost Ohio and Texas. But then he added, "I owe what I am to this country, this country that I love, and I will never forget it." That has been the implicit patriotism of the Obama candidacy: only in America could a product of Kenya and Kansas seek the presidency. It is part of what has proved so thrilling to his young followers, who chanted, "U-S-A, U-S-A," the night that he won the Iowa caucuses. But now, to convince those who doubt him, Obama has to make the implicit explicit. He will have to show that he can be as corny as he is cool.

Am I missing something?...I guess talking about "this country that I love" must be a pretty deeply veiled reference to his patriotism. Sigh. It seems like "lack of patriotism" is going to be the No. 1 knock on Obama, but of all the attack lines (how about aloofness, for example), I think this one is the weakest, even as Obama couldn't wear enough flag lapel pins to satisfy the likes of Klein.

Perhaps the most appealing thing about Obama's candidacy -- even if you're not a supporter -- is his notion that thought-free token patriotism, in the form of lapel pins and the like, can be replaced with love not for symbols but for true American ideals -- like opportunity for all, and basic human and Constitutonal rights, the ideas that caused those supporters to chant "U-S-A, U-S-A."

It's been almost four years since Obama introduced himself to most Americans, but here's what he said that night:

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- at least most of the time.

Those words defined patriotism to a lot of people who watched it.

Now, if only he'd worn a lapel pin while saying them....

"I know what it means to get knocked down. But I've never stayed down, and I never will. Let me tell you something - when it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit. I never give up."

Great analogy.

Except that Rocky loses.

And the actor who played Rocky supports John McCain.

And Clinton started out the race as a favorite of Apollo Creed-like proportions.

Otherwise, a great analogy. "Gonna Cry Now" would have been a great theme song for New Hampshire, though.

All topics are on the table -- it's the open thread.

His poll number is now higher than his bowling score. Meanwhile, Hillary's Bosnia flap not so popular -- nor is Ed Rendell.

Read all about it here.

Sen. Hillary Clinton addressed a wide range of issues during her session that lasted about an hour with the Daily News editorial board, and some of her most interesting comments dealt with the topic du jour: America's struggling economy. She'd spoken on financial issues earlier in the day on the Penn campus, and she was pressed about one of her more controversial ideas: Naming Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, to what she called "a high-level emergency group" to deal with the problem of high risk mortgages.

She told the Daily News that she'd suggested Greenspan, former Fed chair Paul Volker and former Treasury Secretary Ronald Rubin because "each one is supporting one of the three of us" -- an apparent allusion to Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain, the three remaining presidential contenders.

But she was especially prodded on the choice of Greenspan. As some critics have pointed out, the former Fed chair was inactive as the housing bubble grew, and in fact seemed to encourage some of the bad practices that blew up in Wall Street's face. As noted here:

He said a Fed study suggested many homeowners could have saved tens of thousands of dollars in the last decade if they had ARMs. Those savings would not have been realized, however, had interest rates shot up.

"American consumers might benefit if lenders provided greater mortgage product alternatives to the traditional fixed-rate mortgage," Greenspan said.

So the Daily News asked, why Greenspan, that wasn't he off-base on the housing bubble, and here was her response:

"Not only that, but the Fed didn't act while he was there. But he has a calming influence still to this day on Wall Street -- don't ask me why because I never understand what he's saying -- but nevertheless people respond to that Delphic oracle approach. I think it would be wise to include him. And recently he's come out and vert smartly so that we have to deal with housing and maybe we need to have some kind of buyout mechanism for mortgages. So he's moved on his understanding and depth of the problem -- but you know you could pick three others. You just have to have some demonstrable involvement of presidential leadership...

So now we have John McCain saying he doesn't know much about the economy, and Hillary Clinton liking Greenspan even though she has no idea what he's saying -- God help the United States of America.

She did speak clearly, otherwise, and forcefully on the economy, saying that economic problems today are worse than in 1993, when her husband took office, because of foreign indebtedness and oil dependancy. She also made a rather alarming prediction:

"In 1993 we were in a recession -- I think we'll be in a recession in 2009 when the next president takes office," she said. Since many economists believe the economy has been in a recession since the start of 2008, that would mean a longer and deeper slowdown than leaders are hoping for.

She blamed part of the problem on President Bush's management style, saying Bush "needs to have the same level of engagement with the economy" that he has with Iraq. "Part of his credentials when he ran was he would be the first MBA president -- but he hasn't demonstrated much concern about what's going on."

This blog entry was posted on Feb. 9, 2007.

This is a special report.

Normally at this hour, we bring you some lighter fare, maybe the latest dumb comment from the world of sports, or even a tear-jerker like a picture of stranded polar bears. But tonight, there is one story that is so important that we are going to suspend all regular blog coverage, and ignore everything else that is going on in world, from the presidential race to the gridlock in the halls of Congress to the indictment of the most powerful politician here in our hometown of Philadelphia.

This breaking news story is about the sudden, unexpected, and tragic death of a young woman, not to mention the family that she leaves behind.

Yes, people die every day, and too many do so before their time. But this woman was special, and the things that she did made an impact on all of us.

Oh, there were many things that this woman, so deserving of our undivided attention tonight, did not do. No, she didn't take off her clothes for a men's magazine for a big payday, work as "an exotic dancer" or marry a billionaire customer who was 63 years older than her. Nor did she spend most of her adult life pursuing that billionaire's estate in courtrooms from Texas to Washington, D.C., or record her life for a reality TV show, or abuse drugs, or give birth to a child whose paternity is the focus of a legal battle.

Frankly, we feel silly for even writing those things, because such a woman would clearly not be newsworthy.

No, unlike some women you might see on your newsstand this week, this woman liked simple things: According to one report, she "always enjoyed the water, including boating and scuba diving. She also liked yoga and music and spending time with family and friends."

This is what her aunt says about this unique woman that America mourns tonight:

"If you knew her, you loved her. She was a go-getter. She knew what she wanted in life and she was doing what she had to do to achieve that."

Her name is Jennifer M. Parcell. She was just 20 years old, and she graduated in 2004 from Fallston High School in near her hometown, Bel Air, Md.

A couple of years ago, Jennifer Parcell went to Parris Island and watched the Marine graduation services for her older brother, Joseph. She decided that she, too, wanted to join the Marines, and eventually both Jennifer Parcell and her brother were sent to Iraq, even serving at the same post for a time.

But then, they separated. Yesterday, Jennifer Parcell was supporting combat operations in Al Anbar province when she was killed in action. If we had more information about her death, we would provide it. But here at Attytood, we don't have the millions of dollars in resources or the extra manpower that they have at CNN, or MSNBC, or Fox News.

We wish we did, because then we could give the life and death of Jennifer Parcell the national attention that it truly deserves.

We could call in our medical expert, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, to talk about the type of combat injuries that America's fighting men and women are suffering in Iraq, and whether the troops have adequate protection. Then we would dial up our legal affairs correspondent, Jeffrey Toobin, and discuss whether or not Congress has the legal authority to defy the White House and bring at least some of our soldiers home. We'd send all our spare reporters out into the field, maybe to track down the last person who saw Jennifer Parcell alive, or find that friend who could tell us about her life, and our loss. We would make sure that our news coverage gave you a name and a face to go with that number, 3,115.

You may think that we're crazy here, to devote all our attention to the story of just one woman. But at CNN, anchor T.J. Holmes Don Lemon defended this type of saturation coverage just this afternoon. Here's what he said:

"With everything that's going on...that's the reason we've covering it, because it sort of supersedes entertainment. There are a couple of lawsuits at stake here, and it's just been a very tumultuous time for her."

Agreed. This is a very tumultuous time, not just for the families of brave Americans like Jennifer Parcell, but for all of us. We leave you with a picture of her that was taken last September on Iwo Jima. She was very beautiful, and very, very young:

If a woman's death ever deserved wall-to-wall coverage, it was this one.

UPDATE: Greg Mitchell from Editor and Publisher has a great piece this afternoon, with even more about Jennifer Parcell, including some more information from this morning's Baltimore Sun. She was even more special than we first realized:

Even in Iraq, she was managing to take a course at the University of Maryland, the Baltimore Sun relates, adding: "Helping others was routine for the Marine corporal. She sponsored an African child through a mission charity. And when Pakistan was devastated by an earthquake last year, she and others in her unit were dispatched to the scene. She earned the Humanitarian Service Medal for her efforts."