US News
Feb 16, 2008, 5:38 GMT
PREVIEW: Obama looks to keep edge as Democratic race hits Wisconsin
And Also
Similar articles
- ANALYSIS: On Obama's election anniversary, Republicans claim victory
- Republican victories in first election test for Obama (Roundup)
- Republican victories in first election test for Obama (3rd Lead)
- Republican victories in first election test for Obama (2nd Lead)
- Republicans take Virginia in first election test for Obama (1st Lead)
Latest Headlines in US
- 1. Albania set to take in Guantanamo suspects, but not Uighurs
- 2. Fort Hood suspect charged with attempted murder
- 3. White House gate crashers in less festive mood in first interview
- 4. Suspect in US police killing shot dead (1st Lead)
- 5. Suspect in US police killing shot dead
Older Talkback
RE:' Obama fired back in Wisconsin, accusing Clinton of putting up 'boxing gloves' against the Republicans instead of working together with the opposition to hammer out solutions for the country.'
Go, Obama! If nothing else good comes out of this mess, we will at least have an end to the Clinton Clan and the Bush Bunch. Good riddance to both!
'Go, Obama!'
Go Terrorism!
Go Bankruptcy!
Go Open Borders!
Go Socialized medicine that doesn't work!
Go Gutting the peoples rights to gun ownership!
Go Ending the effort for teacher accountability in our schools!
Go Huge Government!
Go A creepy substanceless cult of personality!
Go being told what you want to hear!
...the dems demonized the republicans for the last seven years. It's undeniable that the Clintonistas are the engine for this kind of thing.
If Obama can get Congress to do what it is charged to do, Legislate, instead of accusing baseball personalities of something they can't get into a courtroom, perhaps we'd see some of the pressing issues of our time getting the attention they deserve.
'If Obama can get Congress to do what it is charged to do, Legislate,'
Think about it... To congress that means one word: Spend. With the legislative branch in their hands, complete with their 18% approval rating, and the executive branch being run by this pandering, jug-eared jackass that the legions of illiterate are fawning over what is going to slow them down? We are running up on $10 TRILLION on the debt clock. Instead of addressing this in ANY way Obamas spending proposals are going to bankrupt us by the end of the first half of his first term. (Running up our debt OVER our GDP!)
The problems:
1) Islamist terrorism.
2) Our National debt.
Each of those could effectively end the United States as we know it. Simply put, Obama is the WORST choice on either of those issues.
A few days ago, a local news team went to shoot some film at Obama's Houston campaign headquarters. Behind the desks of the perky gals answering the phones were posters of Che Guevara and Cuban flags. Do Obama's volunteers even know who Che is? Apart from being a really cool guy on posters and T-shirts, like James Dean or Bart Simpson. I doubt it. They're pseudo-revolutionaries. Very few people in America want a real revolution: Life is great, this is a terrific country, with unparalleled economic opportunities.
To be sure, it's a tougher break if you have the misfortune to be the victim of one of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs or a decrepit inner-city grade school with a higher per-student budget than the wealthiest parts of Switzerland. But even so, to be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
Not even Obama supporters want real revolution: Ask the many peoples around the world for whom revolution means not a lame-o Sixties poster above your desk but the carnage and horror of the day before yesterday.
Poor mean, vengeful Hillary, heading for a one-way ticket on the Oblivion Express, has a point. Barack Obama is an elevator Muzak dinner-theater reduction of all the glibbest hand-me-down myths in liberal iconography – which is probably why he's a shoo-in. The problems facing America – unsustainable entitlements, broken borders, nuclearizing enemies – require tough solutions, not gaseous Sesame Street platitudes. But, unlike the whose-turn-is-it? GOP, Mrs. Clinton's crowd generally picks the new kid on the block: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. I wonder if Hillary Rodham, Goldwater Girl of 1964, ever wishes she'd stuck with her original party.
www.ocregister.com/opinion/obama-barack-america-1981504-new-first
The dem religion is going through it's reformation. To do so, they need an inquisition. The old clerics, the Clintonistas, are being told they are out.
Look at their Congressional leadership: They are split on so many issues.
Even if they win, they will leave zillions of disgruntled Obamans behind. This is why the Clinton defections are happening so fast.
If they lose, how many of the Clintonistas are going to follow? Probably the one's desparate for work.
Obama is the new figure. He appeals to the left and has the option of coming to the center anytime he wants. His voting record is virtually, the same as Hillary's, but he's got a shine that appeals to the public as opposed the shrew-ish Hillary.
Is anyone impressed with Obamas resume' or positions? Heck no, because he has no resume' or real positions. He has no executive experience or political machine to go forward with once he's in.
If he loses, he is still a survivor, with national recognition. He would be, undeniably, a player (now a playa?) in national politics.
So here we go, into the void. Polish over substance.
And again we hear from our resident bigots. Deny all you like, but bigot fits you well.
That don't work anymore...ppppperfect. You'll need to get some new ryhmes,
SP4....
Seems to work just as much as your rants/lies about the Clintons. Have a great one bigot.
'And again we hear from our resident bigots. Deny all you like, but bigot fits you well.'
God, seriously, people like you are so programmed and so thoroughly indoctrinated that any reasoned objection to having this phony feel good, substanceless hype spewing, glorified carnival barker elected to the office of President is met with the knee-jerk response for EVERYTHING... Calling someone else a 'bigot'. Please... It ain't working anymore.
You are the only one here voting for someone because of their color. We have already been through this, that makes YOU the bigot.
Would Obama be a frontrunner if he were white?
You and your hand soldier SP4's argument is not any more valid today than last week. I know SP4 has a 5th grade education, but I expected more out of you.
Deny all you want but you better look deep. Last week your hero Mr. McKennedy started flip-flopping, and all we get is the same old crap out of you neo-cons?
Flip flopping? Your jug eared jackass has already started down the 'do as I say not as I do' road that is the essence of liberalism:
'Mr. Obama's Waffle
washingtonpost.com Saturday, February 16, 2008;
AS RECENTLY as November, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was unequivocal about whether he would agree to take public financing for the general election if his Republican opponent pledged to do the same. 'If you are nominated for president in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?' the Midwest Democracy Network asked in a questionnaire. Mr. Obama's answer was clear. 'Yes,' he wrote. 'If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.'
Or maybe not. Mr. Obama deserves credit for obtaining a ruling from the Federal Election Commission that allowed him to raise money for the general election campaign but reserve the right to return the funds if he were to win the nomination and manage to arrange a cease-fire with the other side. That outcome, once improbable, is now within reach. The presumptive Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, agreed long ago to Mr. Obama's deal, back when his prospects for securing the nomination seemed slim. Mr. McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, reaffirmed that pledge this week at a lunch with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.
But Mr. Obama's campaign, which has been raking in money at an astonishing clip of more than $30 million a month, is starting to hedge. Speaking to the Associated Press, Mr. Obama's spokesman, Bill Burton, downgraded the Obama plan to 'something that we pursued with the FEC and it was an option that we wanted on the table and is on the table.' Asked about the campaign's earlier position, Mr. Burton said, 'No, there is no pledge.'
So... the guy without any real qualifications that you are voting for because he is the 'correct' color is already starting in with 'It depends on what the definition of 'is' is...' BS that we couldn't wait to get rid of.
Terence Corcoran, National Post Published: Saturday, February 16, 2008
Somewhere and sometime between now and the Democratic convention, populist glamour boy Barack Obama's charisma can be expected to run out of candlepower. Not totally, of course. He'll always be able to raise a crowd to its feet and bedazzle some people -- like the sensible-looking thirtysomething woman interviewed last Tuesday by the CBC at a Washington pub after Mr. Obama swept the Potomac states. Suspending rational judgment, she said: 'Are you kidding me? I'd walk over hot coals to vote for this man. I mean, oh, he's just ... he's a man that can change not our country, but the world.'
[snip]
If primary voters actually spent time with Mr. Obama's speeches and ideas rather than react to his oratorical skills and rhetorical devices, some might begin to wonder what all the fuss is about. Mr. Obama can deliver rhythmic cadences and rolling repetitive references to 'change' and 'dreams' and 'hope.' As he said: 'No dream is beyond beyond our grasp if we reach for it, and fight for it, and work for it.'
When it comes down to content, however, an Obama speech is not about change at all. It's about more of the same, more of the same old anti-corporate demagoguery, more of the same old attacks on CEO bonuses, Exxon, gouging businesses. There are ritual panderings to big labour and populist notions of free trade and NAFTA and China -- as he did in a speech on Tuesday night to an arena crowd in Madison, Wisc.
On NAFTA and trade, under which businesses 'ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart,' Mr. Obama is playing on the same old populist mythologies that have driven political debate in America for more than a century -- the little people versus the wealthy, the lobbyists, the powerful, profits, special interests, the privileged.
How many proud Wal-Mart workers would find that demeaning reference offensive? Mr. Obama plays off such corporate images. After mentioning Exxon's record profits and high gasoline prices, he later introduces the teacher who works at the night shift at Dunkin Donuts. Will hard-working two-job-holding Americans really take kindly to a politician who tells them their effort is an unnecessary and even futile one that can only be fixed by going after excessive CEO bonus payouts?
When it comes to policy and prescriptions, the grand calls for change and hope soon spiral down to endless lists of tired and familiar programs and payments and promises. In another speech on Wednesday at a General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisc., Mr. Obama ran through thousands of words proposing enough initiatives to keep the same old Dem.-Rep. congressional crown busy for half a decade of the same old political games he says he wants to get rid of -- from universal health care to minimum wage increases to doubling the number of low-income people receiving an earned income tax credit, worth $1,000 a year.
What Barack Obama offers is more, much more, of the same old politics jazzed up by a dazzling salesman with a great big smile. For how long will Americans buy it?
Obama gets down to specifics, and it's not pretty
Thomas Lifson February 14, 2008
Is the American electorate solidly behind the idea of increasing foreign aid $845 billion over the next 13 years? Apparently that is what Barack Obama believes, for a bill he sponsored doing exactly that probably is coming to a vote today in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media.
A nice-sounding bill called the 'Global Poverty Act,' sponsored by Democratic presidential candidate and Senator Barack Obama, is up for a Senate vote on Thursday and could result in the imposition of a global tax on the United States. The bill, which has the support of many liberal religious groups, makes levels of U.S. foreign aid spending subservient to the dictates of the United Nations. [....]
The bill, which is item number four on the committee's business meeting agenda, passed the House by a voice vote last year because most members didn't realize what was in it. Congressional sponsors have been careful not to calculate the amount of foreign aid spending that it would require. According to the website of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, no hearings have been held on the Obama bill in that body.
A release from the Obama Senate office about the bill declares, 'In 2000, the U.S. joined more than 180 countries at the United Nations Millennium Summit and vowed to reduce global poverty by 2015. We are halfway towards this deadline, and it is time the United States makes it a priority of our foreign policy to meet this goal and help those who are struggling day to day.'
The legislation itself requires the President 'to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.'
The bill defines the term 'Millennium Development Goals' as the goals set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, General Assembly Resolution 55/2 (2000).
Because his campaign has stayed with vapid generalities about hope and change, the specifics of this bill are doubly important as an indicator of the direction of Obama's intentions. So a president Obama would follow UN recommendations about shipping more of our tax dollars overseas, apparnelty. Is this really a winning issue?
Update -- Rick Moran adds:
I'm not sure that a 'global tax' is mandated here. It would seem to be one mechanism to meet the .7 GDP requirement in foreign aid spending but is not required.
The bill is an abomination nonetheless. International cooperation is one thing. But this smacks of making US policy subservient to a supra national agenda loaded up with un-American concepts like gun control and government intervention in parent-child relationships.
Here is a truly hilarious piece by Michael Kinsey:
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1713490,00.html
Snippet:'Republicans have pulled some dirty tricks before: Swift Boats, Watergate, you name it. But this time they have gone too far. In its desperate hunger for victory at any cost, the Republican Party is on the verge of choosing a presidential candidate, John McCain, who is widely regarded (everywhere except inside the Republican Party itself) as honest, courageous, likable and intelligent.'
Even Rush Limbaugh will get a kick out of this one.
From David Limbaugh:
www.townhall.com/Columnists/DavidLimbaugh/2008/02/15/mccainiacs_must_pe rsuade_grassroots,_not_commentators
The first fight Senator McCain must win is the fight inside his OWN party. Calls for 'party unity' by Gooper leaders, especially when it is the likes of Gary Bauer, will fall on deaf ears. Senator McCain bragging on his record is going to be COMPLETELY ineffectual. He must reveal his intentions for the future and they had best be detailed. One of the most alarming things I see about the man is that he appears to be completely disorganized and exercises little in the way of forethought.
One of Hillary's advisors just came out and said that, no matter what the regular delegates decide, Hillary will win the Superdelegates.
Picture this: Obama having won the popular dem vote is pushed aside and Hillary installed by some superdelegate who answers to no constituancy, or public body of voters. Yes, folks, it would be the democrats, flushing the negro, in favor of the wife of a former President and party apparatachick.
Gosh, it's almost......marxist!...in it's appearence. Think about it:
'gosh Bill....he actually thought he could get the nomination'
'yeah hon, ah knoow...silly negro! ha ha ha ha!'
The other alternative is that Obama DOES win the nomination and now the Clintonites abandon the party.
It seems to me that blaming the republicans might just be the biggest waste of time they can do! Plus, the alternative isn't really a conservative! Oooooooh! Ick!
'Flip flopping? Your jug eared jackass has already started down the 'do as I say not as I do' road that is the essence of liberalism:'
'Jug eared jackass' nice description, I am sure you mean something else???
Hey idiot, he has yet to flip-flop, he has not even won the nomination? You guys are so pathetic, I know you are in fear of the loss by your party of the war machine that sends people off to be ground up in the desert with no regard for their families or what happens on their return, but the fact is that your boy (the old man) has already flip-flopped. More to come on his part.
'So... the guy without any real qualifications that you are voting for because he is the 'correct' color is already starting in with 'It depends on what the definition of 'is' is...' BS that we couldn't wait to get rid of.'
As stupid as your statements are, when he flip-flops then you idiots can call him on it. Your boy has and that is a fact. The poor POW that was tortured has in fact voted for in favor of torture!
I guess it is OK when it is done by someone a neo-con supports? Being a bigot and being exposed as one must be making you desperate, your comments are in the same league as SP4.
One of the things libnazis cannot do very well is think for themselves. This is borne out by what you call 'superdelegates. More below on that!
Well, if McCain DID vote for greenlighting this kind of interrogation, it must not be very bad. After all, he is the one expert in the Senate on the subject.
The other fact you fools need to face is this little paradox.
Either Bush is smart and fooled 540 legislators with the story of WMD's.
or
Bush is the fool and they got him to rid them of Saddam, and then blamed him for the war, in order to serve their careers.
Now if you go door #1, Bush is the smart guy, and door #2 the dems served up this war for themselves. Go work on that and, by all means, feel free to get back to us. Either way, I think you're not going to like the answer.
Besides, if you're a democrat, you'd better be paying attention to whats happeneing in your own Party.
Harold Ickes, a former Clintonite wag, just came out publicly and said that Hillary intends to bypass the convention dlegates and win via the superdelegates.
This means, to trogladyte dems like you, that all of the primaries are a waste of time. It means that Hillary and the Clintonites intend to deal out the Negro in a positively marxist power play.
Can you imagine what happens next? Do some of your own thinking on that and get back to us.
Your Talkback on this Story