Hillary Clinton went to the country’s financial center to challenge Wall Street to step up and do its part to help fix the mortgage crisis it helped spark. Speaking at NASDAQ (which, technically, is in Times Square, not on Wall Street and is probably a friendlier venue than its downtown neighbor), Clinton put the blame for the explosion of foreclosures on a number of factors, but said “responsibility belongs to Wall Street, which not only enabled but often encouraged reckless mortgage lending.”

“Wall Street helped create the foreclosure crisis, and Wall Street needs to help solve it,” she said. She’s asking the Street to voluntarily:

1) institute a moratorium of at least 90 days on foreclosures of subprime, owner-occupied homes

2) Freeze the monthly rate on subprime adjustable rate mortgages for five years, or until the mortgages are converted to fixed rate loans.

3) provide status reports on the number loans it’s modifying. (watch the meat of her proposal below)

If the big lenders don’t step up, Clinton said she’d consider forcing them through legislation. For those that do volunteer: “I am prepared to consider giving legal protection to servicers and others who administer these loans and who do the right thing.”

The Bush administration is set to unveil its plan to fix the crisis tomorrow, which is said to be similar in calling for a 5 freeze on ARM rates — but Sen Clinton urged Wall Street not to wait on a call from the Treasury Secretary before taking action.

UPDATE: Sen Clinton is already expressing disappointment in the Bush plan, responding to early news reports that suggest the plan has been “whittled” to help a more narrow group of borrowers. “It seems that President Bush is going to give struggling homeowners far less than they need,” she said. Calling for the president to adopt her plan, she said “I look forward to the formal announcement of the Bush plan, but I fear that once again the Administration has let down the American middle class.”

Obama held a rally on the campus of Grinnell College Tuesday in Iowa. Grinnell is a private college of about 9,000 students an hour drive from Des Moines. It’s also where Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, class of ‘10, studies. Gallo-Chasanoff, as identified last month by the Scarlet & Black campus newspaper, is the student who claimed the Clinton campaign provided her with a question to ask the senator at a Newton, Iowa, town hall.

A media flurry ensued and Senator Obama had a good time with the gaffe at some of his town halls. Often when opening up the floor to questions, the senator would note that “these questions have not been prescreened or preselected.”

When Obama came to Grinnell Tuesday night, it was billed as a straight rally, but after he finished his stump speech, the Senator said he had time for three questions before heading to a second rally in Iowa City.

The crowd of mostly students roared when Obama joked that the questions he was about to take were not “prearranged or predetermined.” It wasn’t until some nearby students pointed in Gallo-Chasanoff’s direction that the senator noticed the student standing in the front row of the rally (the campaign insisted Obama did not know she was there beforehand).

After the event when Obama worked the ropeline, he talked to the student for a couple minutes and, according to the New York Times, she told a campaign volunteer she was not ready to sign a supporter card for the senator.

A group of no less than six reporters approached Gallo-Chasanoff following her brief exchange with Obama, but the press-shy student and some of her protective friends lost us in the dark of a cold, Iowa night.

The National Intelligence Estimate revealing that Iran dismantled its nuclear weapons program in 2003 has been the subject of the first 15 minutes of the NPR debate — with Hillary Clinton’s opponents using the new revelation to attack her vote for the Kyl-Lieberman resolution calling on President Bush to designate the Iranian National Guard a terrorist organization.

Senators Biden and Dodd voted against the resolution, while Obama, though he missed the vote, has criticized Hillary for supporting the resolution. And John Edwards has called it part of the rush for war, saying today that “among the Democratic candidates there’s only one who voted for this resolution, and it’s exactly what Bush and Cheney wanted.”

Responding to Edwards’ charges, Clinton said “I understand politics and making outlandish political charges, but this goes too far.”

She points out that many opponents of the Iraq war (including Obama supporter Dick Durbin) voted for the resolution, calling it a vote for aggressive diplomacy.   She also argued that since the vote commanders on the ground have said they’ve seen Iran draw back from its involvement in Iraq — a point that Joe Biden then disputed.

An Edwards operative I spoke to in the hotel bar last night wondered aloud when the negative ads from outside groups would start dropping in Iowa. Well, we have our answer. The first independent attack ad of the cycle is out, and it goes after Hillary Clinton — not from her right, but from her left.

A liberal group called Democratic Courage is behind the spot, which blasts Hillary for backing down in the face of Republican pressure — specifically over her comments that she liked the idea of a $5,000 “baby bond” for every child born in America. The ad, which is set to run in Iowa but is suspiciously absent from the IA airwaves, features a life-size cardboard cut-out of the Senator that gets blown over, presumably by the metaphorical winds of GOP criticism.

(UPDATE: the Clinton campaign points out that, as of now, Democratic Courage hasn’t spent a dime to put this ad on TV in Iowa, DC, or anywhere else. It’s a fairly common trick these days to release a web ad without buying any air time, then using the free media buzz to raise money to actually put the ad on TV. As of right now, no Iowans are actually seeing this attack).

The ad comes as Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle sent an email to supporters in the early states complaining that dirty tricks like push-polling and misinformation have already begun — so won’t you send us money to help fight them? All the accounts of the attacks are anecdotal, but Obama’s name is mentioned twice in the fundraising appeal.

Watch the DCourage ad here, and read the email after the jump.

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In Clear Lake, IA, the city where the music died, the Clinton hits on Barack Obama just kept on coming. One month to the day before the Iowa caucuses — and in the Surf Ballroom where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper played their last concert in 1959 — Hillary bopped Obama on health care (his plan leaves out 15 million Americans), Social Security (he’s repeating Republican talking points by saying it’s in crisis, and would institute a $1 trillion tax hike), and Iran (he failed to show up for that important vote to call the Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group, but later used it to attack her).

But there were some new wrinkles today, including taking Obama to task for voting not “yes” or “no,” but “present” 7 times as a state senator in Illinois on issues like abortion and gun violence.

“A president can’t pick and choose which challenges he or she will face,” she said. “Instead of looking for political cover or taking a pass, we need a president who will take a stand.”

Without mentioning him by name, Hillary also dismissed the Obama argument that her long tenure in Washington makes her ill-equipped to bring about real change — saying “you decide what makes sense – entrust our country to someone who is ready on day one to make the decisions and the changes we need, or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience who started running for president has soon as he arrived in the United States Senate.”

Obama’s campaign responded with a long list of press clippings defending those “present” votes. Obama spokesman Bill Burton released a statement saying “The truth is, Barack Obama doesn’t need lectures in political courage from someone who followed George Bush to war in Iraq, gave him the benefit of the doubt on Iran, supported NAFTA and opposed ethanol until she decided to run for President.”

And asked about the increasing frequency of the attacks, Obama replied, “it’s silly season.”

The campaign is really pushing two new Iowa polls that show her leading, within the margin of error — pointing out that while Obama is responding to her hits on his health care plan by pointing to sinking poll numbers, the two most recent surveys show her ahead.

The AP poll has Hillary topping Obama 31-26, with leads in every demographic. And a new Hawkeye poll from Iowa State University has her up on John Edwards 31% to 24%, with Obama at 20%.

But both polls have some weird features. The AP survey was in the field from Nov 7th to Nov 25th, while the Hawkeye poll was out from the 6th to the 18th — both unusually long date ranges, and long enough ago that they don’t reflect the developments of the last week and a half. The Hawkeye poll, meanwhile, has a margin of error of 6 points, and while it cites interviews with 1,416 registered Iowa voters, it’s likely caucus goers that matter. That number isn’t listed.

The upshot? Iowa is notoriously difficult to poll, and every survey in the last 3 months has shown all top candidates within the margin of error. It’s really just too close to call out here. In fact, the Clinton camp is using that fact to raise money — putting out a fundraising email called “Dead Heat in Iowa” that asks supporters to drum up $1.25 million in the next week.

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Obama has a new website called Hillary Attacks to point out and refute Hillary’s latest jabs on his health care plan and his political action committee (as well as on those Kindergarten essays he wrote expressing his desire to be president).

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Minutes after a Clinton spokesman jokingly threatened to down the press plane if reporters failed to write about the new, positive surveys, the cabin began filling with smoke after landing on an icy runway in Mason City… the same airport where Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper boarded their ill-fated flight on Feb 3, 1959. Her event, meanwhile, is being held in the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake — the last concert venue those three ever played.

That spokesman has promised he did not intentionally jinx us, but the national press corps understandably suspicious. We’re supposed to get back on that same plane to fly to Sioux City. Many of us are considering renting a car.

Senator Clinton turned up the heat on Barack Obama on Sunday, saying the race comes down to “courage and convictions” — and blasting Obama’s positions on health care and his Political Action Committee as lacking both.

Hillary came out firing on the health care before she took even a single question at a media availability in Cedar Rapids, accusing Obama of changing his tune on whether his plan covers all Americans depending on the audience. “Yesterday, in the space of a few hours, it went from universal when I wasn’t there, to comprehensive when we were on the same [stage],” she said — a reference to Saturday’s Black/Brown Presidential Forum in Iowa, where Obama seemed to be at great pains not to call his plan “universal.”

“I think the people of Iowa need to know there’s a big difference between our plans,” she said. “But more importantly there’s a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we’re willing to fight for.” Touting her record, Clinton said “the people of Iowa are going to get a chance to chose between someone who talks the talk, and someone who walked the walk.”

On universal care, she said, “Senator Obama got to the brink and blinked,” adding “You’ve got to ask yourself, who’s really committed here? Who’s doing it for political reasons, and who has a lifetime of conviction and commitment?”

But it didn’t stop there. Hillary also attacked Obama for failing to shut down his Hope Fund leadership PAC, spurring allegations that he’d used it to spread money to curry favor with key figures in early primary states — accusing him of hypocrisy. “Its not only that this PAC is still open and operating,” she said. “It’s that, contrary to what we’ve been hearing now for a year, it had lobbyist money, it had PAC money, and they were more than happy to take that money and to use it to try to influence elections, and to create relationships with people while he was running for president.”

And asked whether she was saying this was an issue of character when it comes to Senator Obama, Senator Clinton at first demurred — but then said “it’s beginning to look a lot like that. You know, it really is, where you can’t get a straight answer on health care; where somebody who runs on ethics and not taking money from certain people is found out to have at least skirted if not violated the FEC rules, and to use lobbyist and PAC money to do so.”

Senator Clinton seemed to express something like regret about the frontal assault, saying she’d rather be attacking Republicans and America’s problems. But, she said, “I have been, for months, on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks. Well, now the fun part starts. We’re into the last month, and we’re going to start drawing the contrasts.”

UPDATE: Barack Obama takes issue with Hillary’s assertion that this part of the campaign is “fun.” The campaign released a statement from the Senator saying “this presidential campaign isn’t about attacking people for fun, it’s about solving people’s problems…. Washington insiders might think throwing mud is fun, but the American people are looking for leadership that can unite this country around a common purpose.”

Check out her latest, greatest hits. done

We can’t be positive that there’s a cause and effect relationship, but it sure is suspicious; the respected Des Moines Register poll dropped last night showing Obama leading Hillary 28% to 25% in Iowa — which is still within the margin of error. Then this morning, the campaign goes after Obama on two unrelated fronts — his political action committee, and just how long he’s wanted to be president.

First, communications director Howard Wolfson repeated the campaign’s call for Obama to shut down his Hope Fund PAC on CBS Face The Nation this morning, accusing Obama… of “taking in money from lobbyists despite the fact he’d said he doesn’t take money from lobbyists and giving money out to candidates in New Hampshire and Iowa to suport his presidential campaign.”

“There’s a lot that voters don’t know about Barack Obama,” he said

But even better, the Clinton campaign released a response to Obama’s claim in Iowa this morning that “I have not been planning to run for President for however number of years some of the other candidates have been planning for.” That’s a veiled shot at Hillary, about whom it was controversially written this summer that she and her husband had a 20 year-old plan to get her in the White House.

Clinton spokesman Phil Singer says “Senator Obama’s comment today is fundamentally at odds with what his teachers, family, classmates and staff have said about his plans to run for President,” adding, “Senator Obama’s campaign rhetoric is getting in the way of his reality.”

The kicker? In a research document, the campaign cites an AP report that “In kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled ‘I Want to Become President.’”

Obama Spokesman Bill Burton writes, “I’m sure tomorrow they’ll attack him for being a flip-flopper because he told his second grade teacher he wanted to be an astronaut.”

Burton says the attacks on Obama are a result of Hillary’s slipping poll numbers.

Check out the full Clinton document on Obama’s desire to be president after the jump, and watch Howard Wolfson below.

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Des Moines, IA

To commemorate World AIDS Day many of the presidential candidates are 
launching HIV/AIDS platforms. Today, the Romney campaign sent out a
 release outlining their plan to fight AIDS.

“As President, I will mobilize our civilian instruments of power to
 address HIV/AIDS, poverty and other challenges across Africa by
 empowering a single U.S. official with the responsibility and
 authority to lead all of America’s civilian efforts in the region. I
 will fundamentally transform our international aid efforts so that
 more of our assistance goes to those suffering rather than
 bureaucracy.  Today, only one-third of all foreign aid gets to the 
people it was intended to help.  That must change.”

The statement continues outlining their plan to fight the disease in
the United States:

“As devastating as HIV/AIDS has been around the world, we must not 
forget that over a million Americans are living with the disease here
 at home.  We should do all we can to ensure that America continues to
 lead the world in cutting-edge research and development into new
 medicines. I believe in supporting policies that foster innovation and
 get every American access to affordable, quality health insurance.  I
 also believe that government should work in partnership with our
 nation’s pharmaceutical researchers and manufacturers to advance the
 HIV/AIDS research agenda and move us toward a cure.”

Yesterday, Governor Romney was campaigning in Iowa and was asked about the AIDS crisis by two women, both in response to Governor Huckabee launching his HIV/AIDS agenda. Huckabee calls for expanding health insurance, increasing research funds and continuing his support for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.

Romney seemed unsure of his plan at the time. The first questioner asked if the Presidential hopeful will make sure HIV positive people get the treatment they need before they get sick. He didn’t answer and instead took the opportunity to discuss his health care plan.

“I believe I am the only governor in America that’s actually put in place a plan that gets everybody health insurance. I’m pretty proud of the fact that everybody else is talking about it, but I actually did it,” he said.

He continued with a dig at politicians who want universal health insurance, presumably Senator Clinton: “Not by giving people government health insurance, but instead by helping people get private free market insurance and that’s what we did in my state…that will cover people not only with HIV/AIDS, but people with hypertension, people with diabetes, and with all the diseases and conditions we have in our country.”

The Governor was also asked what he would do to fight AIDS in Africa
 and increase worldwide funding. Romney didn’t answer the question directly — instead he pressed his commitment to America and garnered applause from the crowd.

“Well there is no question we care about the conditions of the world. Of poverty and sickness and disease. But, I have to be honest with you that my first priority is with Americans and caring for our citizens here and that will be my first responsibility as President of the United States and I will also as a member of a generous nation work hard to alleviate suffering and pain and poverty around the world,” he said.

Senator McCain also released a statement today offering his prayers to 
those affected and committed his support to the President’s Emergency
 Plan for AIDS Relief, a U.S.-funded, five-year, $15 billion plan to 
fight HIV/AIDS in developing nations. The program, which launched in
 2005, is going to expire in 2003. It has come under fire because one
 third of the funds spent on disease prevention abroad must go to
 abstinence education. McCain also called for transparency from the
 countries America assists in the fight: “Afflicted nations with whom
 we partner to fight this disease must also know that we expect a level
 of governance, transparency and effectiveness from them in order to
 make the fullest use of AIDS assistance so we can make the greatest
 impact on people’s lives.”

The Giuliani campaign also shared his thoughts on defeating the disease: “As President, I will continue America’s life saving role as a leader in the global fight against HIV/AIDS until the day humanity can declare victory against this deadly disease.”

This week Senator Clinton launched an HIV/AIDS platform at Rick
 Warren’s Saddleback Church in California. Her plan to fight the disease includes increasing funding, guaranteeing health insurance for patients, escalating commitments to research and providing at least $50 billion for global HIV/AIDS by 2013, among other initiatives.

One of the quirks of the Black and Brown Forum is that candidates are allowed to question other candidates… and as in past years, candidates are using the feature mostly to talk about themselves.

Bill Richardson may have thought he had a clever way to play up his unique experience as Governor, running against a group of legislators — running through former Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton’s accomplishments as governor and president and asking Senator Clinton “Don’t you think Governors make good presidents?”

After joining the crowd and Richardson himself in a hearty round of laughter, Hillary joked, “Well, Bill, I also think they make good vice presidents.”