Clinton soldiers on at Kentucky distillery

LORETTO, Ky. — The day had barely begun and Hillary Rodham Clinton was already eyeing the whiskey.

The Democratic senator wasn't drowning her sorrows; she was touring Kentucky's Maker's Mark distillery as she soldiered on despite a difficult week. Her opponent, Barack Obama, continues to draw more Democratic forces into his camp.

Clinton began a multiday swing through Kentucky on Saturday with a tour of the famous distillery in Loretto, where its first bottle of bourbon whiskey was created in the 1950s. Perhaps she is hoping for a replay in Kentucky of the election boost her much-publicized shot of whiskey gave her last month in Pennsylvania, where she won the primary.

This time around, Clinton put on gloves and safety goggles and joined the assembly line to dip a bottle of whiskey in Maker's trademark red-wax coating.

"There are some people who have been saying for months that this is over, and every time they say it, the voters come back and say, 'Oh no it's not,' " Clinton told supporters. "You don't quit on people and you don't quit until you finish what you started, and you don't quit on America."

At another stop, she criticized presumed Republican nominee Sen. John McCain for promoting an economic agenda that she said would be "nothing less than four more years of George Bush economics."

What's in the stars for candidates?

DENVER — More than 1,500 astrologers from 45 countries are in Denver, site of the Democratic National Convention in August, for the "United Astrology Conference: Rockin' the Universe."

The gathering concludes Tuesday with a panel predicting a presidential winner in November.

Key to those picks: astrological charts for Sens. John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Integral to those charts: the candidates' exact birth times.

Late Thursday, Dallas astrologer Joni Patry announced a birth time for Obama, one she said she got from a client with connections to the campaign: 7:11 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961.

McCain's birth time came from his mother, Roberta, who mentioned her son was born Aug. 29, 1936, at 11 a.m.

Clinton's birth time remains a moving target. "I think [they] ... just don't want us to know that information," joked astrologer Shelley Ackerman.

Accurate birth times are essential for astrologers devising the charts of the moon, stars and planets they use to predict the future.

So who's going to win in November? Patry predicted McCain. Ackerman declined to say. But she did say Joseph Biden and Mitt Romney are top Democratic and Republican VP hopefuls.

Seattle Times news services