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If Hillary Clinton is Rocky, who are her rivals?

A struggling small time boxer takes on the heavyweight champ in a once-in-a-lifetime fight in which he strives to go the distance, not for the glory or the spoils of victory, but for his self-respect. Not exactly the most striking parallel with Hillary Clinton, one half of America's most formidable political power couple. Perhaps the former first lady was envisioning her defeat on points at the end of a fight which leaves both opponents forever scarred...

But let's say we suspend our disbelief for a moment, and accept that Mrs Clinton is Rocky Balboa, that underdog fighter battling the establishment heavyweights. Who would Barack Obama be? And John McCain? In the Clinton-as-Rocky scenario Apollo Creed seems the obvious choice for Obama, but his status as reigning champion doesn't fit. Ivan Drago, the evil Soviet droid? Too inarticulate. Clubber Lang, aka Mr T? His infectious catchphrases and years spent on the mean streets of Chicago make him a more likely candidate, but his gratuitously sadistic nature rules him out too.

In fact, after Mrs Clinton's bagged the best role, the remaining field of cartoon baddies seems a little scant, so I've widened my search to all Sylvester Stallone films to give McCain and Obama an equal shot at action hero status. And after several hours of rumination and intense discussion with my newsroom colleagues, the results are in.

First up, John McCain. An Vietnam veteran who can no longer raise his arms above his head due to the torture he suffered at the hands of the Vietcong, a bit of a maverick, a tinderbox temperament, relentlessly patriotic and ideological - he can only be John Rambo.

Barack Obama is a little tougher. There are few great orators among Stallone's heroes, so I've chosen a man whose physical agility can perhaps match the Illinois senator's rhetorical dexterity  - Gabe Walker, aka Cliffhanger.

Now that would be a fight I'd like to see.

Obama and the Cuban flag controversy

US blogs are buzzing with the latest campaign trail controversy - the display of a Cuban flag in a Texas office set up by supporters of Barack Obama. Not only that, the wall-size flag is superimposed with the image of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara.

The flag was featured in a segment on Fox 26, a local Fox station, looking at efforts by Obama supporters in Houston ahead of the crucial March 4 primary here, and immediately sent right-wingers into a collective fit of apoplexy. Googling "Obama Cuban flag" currently draws a mammoth 534,000 results, challenging "Obama Muslim"'s 1,100,000 for pole position in the smear stakes.

Obama's campaign has since disassociated itself with the volunteer concerned and her ideological viewpoint.

There are a few points to note here -

1 - The office was set up by unpaid volunteers and is not a campaign office - despite Fox's claims to the contrary in its rather misleading original segment, repeated by right wing bloggers across the country. Fox has since acknowledged its error - but bloggers haven't followed suit.

2 - The volunteer concerned is Cuban-American and has a right to her views of her own country of origin. Joseph McCarthy died quite some time ago now.

3- She also comes across as a bit of a flake, as is evident in Fox's subsequent interview. If anything, I'd be more concerned about her proximity to the Obama campaign than that of the bearded one.

3 - Even if Obama did secretly harbour a penchant for Marxist ideology, he'd hardly advertise it to Fox News.

5 - In attempting to hype up the story, the reporter claims that Che Guevara was responsible for "tens of thousands of deaths" - but where did this figure come from? Estimates of executions during Guevara's time as commander of La Cabaña prison immediately after the revolution do vary, but the majority are measured in the low hundreds. Was the reporter perhaps confused with the 20,000 estimated extra-judicial killings under the previous regime of Fulgencia Batista, the US-supported dictator, whose victims were mostly tortured to death?

Here's what the blogs are saying:

Babalu Blog: “Amazing. Simply amazing. The Butcher of La Cabaña, a well deserved and earned nickname for the murdering Argentine, on a Cuban flag in a U.S. Presidential campaign office, draped next to an American Flag. That’s not just a dichotomy or something akin to an irony, it is downright disgusting.”

Charles Johnson on Little Green Footballs:

"If I’m “insinuating” anything, it’s this: when you actively pander to and encourage the radical leftist elements of your party, as the Democrats have been determinedly doing for the past eight years, you’re going to end up with embarrassing scenes like this.

"And attacking the messenger who points it out is standard political damage control."

Outside the Beltway

"Che worship (or, alternatively, the wearing of Che t-shirts as a statement without the slightest clue of who he was) seems to be a phase that certain left-leaning activists go through in their youth; it generally passes. Driscoll’s characterization of it as “juvenilia” is spot on.

"But, surely, Obama doesn’t need to publicly weigh in on the decorating choices of every low level staffer? Let alone “renounce” affinities which he’s never shown?"

John Cole's Balloon Juice:

" I take this as a sign that the GOP is feeling threatened by Obama.

"Is there anyone except the troglodyte right who thinks our Cuba policy has been a success and doesn’t need to be thought through? I mean, if you want to look at long-term failed policies, Cuba could be right up there at the top. What exactly has been accomplished?"

The Clintons and Mr Rezko

Matt Drudge has posted this picture of the Clintons beaming alongside... wait, who is that? Ah yes, Tony Rezko, the indicted property developer whose past contributions (now donated to charity) to the Obama campaign have been the focus of numerous attacks by the Clinton camp in recent days.

In the South Carolina debate earlier this week, the former first lady attacked Obama for engaging in a land deal with Rezko while in the Illinois state legislature. Obama severed ties with the businessman after he was indicted on fraud, attempted extortion and money laundering charges for allegedly plotting to get campaign money and payoffs from firms seeking to do business before two state boards.

The 53-year-old businessman also faces a separate federal charge of conning the General Electric Capital Corp. out of $10 million in connection with the sale of pizza restaurants.

Mrs Clinton was confronted with the photo during an interview on NBC News today.

She insisted she did not know Rezko, saying “I probably have taken hundreds of thousands of pictures. … I wouldn’t know him if he walked in the door. I don’t have a 17-year-relationship with him,” alluding to Obama’s links to Rezko.

Clinton — who was herself forced to cut ties with and return contributions from businessman Norman Hsu after it emerged that he was evading fraud charges — was asked if it was fair to attack her rival in such a way in light of the fact that Rezko was an established contributer to the Democratic party. Didn't she know from personal experience that it was impossible to completely vet all political contacts?

“There’s a big difference between standing somewhere taking a picture with someone you don’t know and haven’t seen since and having a relationship that, you know, the newspapers in Chicago have been exploring,” she replied.

Still, something about beams and motes springs to mind...