The NASA inspector general confirms what most of us already knew: Bush political appointees ran amok in the NASA press office with global warming naysaying.

We’re featuring Andrei Cherny’s book The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour this week at TPMCafe Book Club.

In addition to Cherny, Michael Tomasky of The Guardian, James Traub, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, Lawrence Kaplan, editor of World Affairs, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, and Michael Barone, a senior writer for U.S. News & World Report will be blogging about the book.

It looks like the curtain may be drawing to a close on the Obama-Clinton drama. But what about Terry McAuliffe, who’s raised campaign spinning to something approaching performance art. And I’m not kidding or being facetious about my admiration. When a campaign manager for a major presidential candidate shows up on set wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a bottle of rum as a prop, you know you’re in unexplored territory. As we wait for the events of the evening we take a moment to review Terry’s recent oeuvre …

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

I know there’s still some disagreement about whether tonight will bring us the end of the Democratic party’s nomination process. But there’s no question that it is the last primary or caucus. And like every other primary and caucus night of this cycle, we’ll be right here bringing you the results live as they come. And we’ll be here until all the results are known.

Tonight, most of the polling stations in South Dakota will close at 8 PM Eastern. But they won’t start reporting the results until 9 PM when polls close in the Mountain Time Zone part of state. Polls close in Montana at 10 PM Eastern. (TPMCafe reader/blogger Nate Biehl is reporting from on the ground in Montana throughout the day.)

There are also a couple of congressional primaries we’ll be covering — the Democratic primary in New Jersey, pitting Sen. Frank Lautenberg against Rep. Rob Andrews, and the Republican primary in New Mexico in which Rep. Heather Wilson squares off against Rep. Steve Pearce for the privilege of being slaughtered by Democratic Rep. Tom Udall in November.

And if all that isn’t enough TPM Election Central’s Greg Sargent will be reporting live from the Hillary Clinton election night victory party across town from TPM World Headquarters.

So join us.

Bush says we’ll be in Iraq a mere 40 years.

“This is the great war of our times. It is going to take forty years.”

From Newsday …

Even if reports that Hillary Clinton will acknowledge Barack Obama has enough votes to win, one man is urging her to stay in it.

Former top strategist Mark Penn, reviled by many on Hillary’s staff but still an important voice in the candidate’s ear, has emerged (to no one’s surprise) as the strongest advocate of her remaining in the race regardless of what happens in the next 24 hours, according to sources inside the campaign.

In contrast to the “realist faction” (which reportedly includes Penn’s replacement Geoff Garin, communications chief Howard Wolfson and others), Penn is advising the Clintons to remain in the race through the convention — just in case another Rev. Wright-type scuffle breaks out.

His argument: Suspend the campaign if you must, but don’t end it, because all those Obama supers will flock to Hillary if more dirt on O emerges before the convention.

Really, on several levels, this is no surprise. Whatever bad blood there still may be between the rival camps, Garin, Wolfson and pretty much everyone else I can think of on that campaign are Democrats. On every level of meaning of the word. Except Penn.

I don’t just mean that in a pejorative sense but more in a descriptive one. He has no attachment to the Democratic party or really anything it stands for, even by a very broad definition. He works for the Clintons. He’s got his corporate clients. But that’s basically it. From the standpoint of his allegiances, it’s actually a logical call.

Late Update: For the record, Penn himself sends in the following via email to TPM: “Story is just not accurate and I can’t disclose what advice I did give or options I outlined.”

That long-predicted flood of super-delegates has finally arrived. In our feature to the right you can see the link to Eric Kleefeld’s running count of Obama’s delegate total for today, pre-primaries. As of 5:36 PM on the East Coast, he’s at a 19.5 delegate pick up for the day.

So just to be clear that makes it close to a mathematical certainty that by the end of this evening Barack Obama will have gone over the 2118 delegates necessary to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Jonathan Alter: The problem with historical analogies is not that they’re wrong, it’s that they’re often misused.

Greg Sargent sets the scene at what is likely to be a pretty somber final Hillary rally in NYC — although I’m sure they’ll do their best to keep things spirited for the TV cameras.

Here at TPM HQ we’re watching John McCain’s prebuttal to Sen. Obama’s speech tonight.

And, man, I’m curious to hear what other people think, but I really feel like he would have served himself much better by just going to ground for the evening.

McCain is often very good when he speaks extemporaneously. Even better in 2000. But still good. He’s also good in debates. But giving set piece speeches, let’s face it, he’s simply awful. He finds it impossible to pretend he’s actually thinking what he’s saying. But this whole speech is defensive in character (explaining why he’s not running for Bush’s third term), awkward and just feels old. The slogan seems to be: Am Not McSame!

The crowd of maybe like 200 people is also sort of an unfortunate contrast.

Late Update: Here’s how bad it is. All the Fox commentators are giving competing explanation for why McCain’s speech sucked.

And here it is …