Category: Barack Obama

MILLIONS OF people have voted for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton out of a sense that they will bring needed change, such as a solution to the disaster of the health care system. But will they? ELIZABETH SCHULTE explains why the proposals of the Democrats on health care fall short.

h/t Dissidentvoice.org

Looks like Moulitsas still can’t let go of the paranoid “Clinton darkened Obama in her ad” conspiracy theory.

Look, I dislike Hillary Clinton as much as any true Progressive, but this has got to stop.  There are plenty of things the senator says and does in this campaign that are worthy of criticism, but engaging in this sort of unsubstantiated speculation and attack really only hurts two things: Obama’s campaign, and Left Blogsylvania.

It hurts Obama’s campaign because it makes his followers and, by association, the candidate himself, look like they’re hiding behind his race.  Similarly, it hurts Left Blogsylvania because it makes us look like a bunch of delusional kooks who probably haven’t been laid in ages (if ever) and from whom candidates can’t distance themselves fast enough.  Substantive posts like this one end up being ignored or marginalized, because of the association with what is perceived to be a group of utter loons.

I respectfully advise Markos Moulitsas and his band of bloggers to please give it a rest.  Dig up what you can on Clinton; Lord only knows she deserves it.  But don’t let your zeal for exposing her overtake common sense and better judgment.  Or sanity.  Especially sanity.

Cross-posted from THE ENVIRONMENTALIST

I woke up this morning with a headache, downed two extra-strength aspirin and am finally able to open my eyes enough to read and write and listen to the telly and hear all about do-overs and Mark Penn and Harold Ickes’ Dick Cheney moment:

Penn had no real people of his own on the inside and chafed whenever Solis Doyle or Ickes got involved in his sphere. At one point, he and Ickes, who have been battling each other within the Clinton orbit for a dozen years, lost their tempers during a conference call, according to two participants.

“[Expletive] you!” Ickes shouted.

“[Expletive] you!” Penn replied.

“[Expletive] you!” Ickes shouted again.

Via The Politico By: Josephine Hearn and Amie Parnes and Josh Kraushaar :

There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein’s will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked.

That’s what Senator Bob Graham, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 wrote his Washington Post OpEd regarding the classified 90-page National Intelligence Estimate on Saddam’s Iraq that was presented by Bush administration’s CIA as evidential basis for a war with Iraq:

What I Knew Before the Invasion

By Bob Graham

Sunday, November 20, 2005

I just returned from voting in Ohio’s primary.  I cast my ballot for Dennis Kucinich, as my choice for both the presidency and the 10th Congressional District’s representative.  And thus my conscience is clean.

I know, I know.  “You just wasted your vote,” many of you shall say.  To that I give you this simple response:  Horse shit.  The only votes wasted, dear readers, are those not cast and those cast for a candidate who doesn’t represent you.  Anyone who tells you differently is either lying to you, or doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

These are not things I write lightly.  I know quite well that what I’ve just typed shall piss off a number of people.  The truth, however, was never designed to make people happy.

Primaries are precisely the time when we as voters are supposed to stand up and vote our beliefs.  Why in God’s name would anyone vote for someone who doesn’t represent him?  “Pragmatism”?  That’s a bullshit excuse, one designed to justify keeping the status quo intact.  And for far too long, far too many Democrats have succumbed to that argument.  We voted “pragmatically” in 2004, cast our ballots for a candidate who wasn’t worth the toilet bowl he shat into, and what did it get us?  Nothing, except four more years of crap raining down upon our country.  Four more years of craven capitulation — two of them under a Democratic Congress — to a boy tyrant who in a sane world would have been removed from office and convicted of treason during the first year of his reign.

Neither Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama have earned so much as a single Democratic vote.  But for the desperation of Americans to elect anyone other than a Republican, the adulation and scorn of the corporate media, and the humongous egos of the two prima donnas themselves, they are the candidates we have been saddled with in this primary season.

There is an admonition against allowing the “perfect” to be the enemy of the “good”.  But really, how many people do you know who ask for or expect perfect?  I and everyone I know is fully aware that nothing and no one is perfect.  All we want are good policy and good representatives.  Yet each and every election cycle, we’re forced to accept the mediocre and the downright bad.

It doesn’t, and shouldn’t, have to be that way.  However you intend to vote in the general election, is this or is it not the time to vote your beliefs — to cast your ballot for the presidential candidate who represents you?  Not Big Business, not the DLC, but you.  Mr. and Ms. Average American.  To hand your ballot to someone who doesn’t represent you is to surrender it to the status quo, to send a message that, no matter how much you may complain about the way things are, you’re perfectly content to leave it as is.

That isn’t democracy, ladies and gentlemen.  It’s a monarchical system, one in which the will of the public is subjected to the greed and ambition of a political minority whose interests are to keep you beaten down and in service to the economic elite.  And I don’t know about you ladies and gentlemen, but I refuse to give in to that bullshit.  Politicians are supposed to work for us, to be our voices in the halls of power.  We are not supposed to subject our interests and political beliefs to those we employ.

Maybe your state’s primary or caucus has already been held.  Maybe it’s today, or has yet to be held.  For those of you who fall into the latter categories,ask yourselves if it isn’t worth it to challenge this fucked up system by voting for the candidate who represents you, just to see what would happen.

E.J. Dionne is one of the better columnists in the corporate media, but he asks a silly question:

So how did the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination come down to a choice between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? We have become so accustomed to their pounding each other relentlessly that we’ve forgotten that this is a remarkable endgame.

And he then gives a long, well-considered answer about tactics and strategy and other irrelevancies.

You really want to know how it came down to this? Money. As I noted when John Edwards dropped out, this was the breakdown:

Hillary Clinton: Spent $40,472,775 On hand $50,463,013

Barack Obama: Spent $44,167,993 On hand $36,087,190

John Edwards: Spent $18,028,752 On hand $12,397,048

Here are the latest numbers:

Barack Obama: Spent $85,176,289 On hand $18,626,248

Hillary Clinton: Spent $80,353,785 On hand $37,947,874

Nothing at all remarkable, actually. Get it?

I read OPOL’s beautiful diary on JFK with tears in my eyes. JFK’s valiant words are radical-sounding in Bush-ruled America. Today is a difficult day for me because the issues of the day are writ so large, and the remedies provided are so meager. The Clinton/Obama tussle has driven me from dkos back into international and counterculture media, and back to this site as a possible refuge. I’m wondering if others are as concerned as I am about the outcome today.

At dkos I posted a diary awhile ago about some Obama advisors who concern me. I’ll share a bit of my perspective. The times are too troubled to accommodate some of the political thinking I see coming out of the Obama camp. Please share your thoughts about some of the points I raise.

This diary will attempt to detail how Obama will screw up as President.

Think before you vote, people!

Read before you comment, too! 😉

(X-posted at that Other Place)

And I am an undecided voter…

Our friends over on the other side of the aisle are having quite the debate about whether or not to use middle names when referring to Dem candidates, and watching the schism develop between the thinking conservatives and their knuckle-dragging cousins is getting to be some great popschadenfruedecorn fun.  On the rather turgid rec list at RedState, a “blog” entitled To Hussein or not to Hussein… (Danger: RedState) has generated nearly 100 comments – a huge number, by rightroots standards.  The more respectable of the commenters are trying to point out that the meme is rather loud for a dog whistle; they’re up against a contingent that somehow sees repetition as proof that they are not themselves racists.

Best of luck to the side fighting the good fight over there, but the point of this diary isn’t to analyze the Unmasking of the Know-Nothings – it’s to point out what’s being overlooked in the whole debate: That John McCain has a middle name, too!.  And you know what?

It’s Sidney!!!  That’s just ONE LETTER AWAY from spelling SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA!!!

Please join me below the fold for the sounding out of 2008’s latest dog whistle, as well as some disturbing news about our plotting mates from Down Under.

Yesterday I posted about how Barack Obama’s record does not match his campaign rhetoric, or the misperceptions of far too many of his followers.  Today I’m going to explain how we can hold his feet to the proverbial fire, should he win the Democratic nomination and go on to become president.

Matt Gonzalez over at BeyondChron.org wrote a brilliant exposé on Barack Obama that must be shared.  The hardest part of trying to get Democrats elected to power is vetting them, especially during election years in which people are so desperate for someone who can deliver on a promise of change that they fail to look past the campaign rhetoric to see the truth.  I’ve explained on other blog sites that Barack Obama is a DLCer in progressive’s clothing.  Mr. Gonzalez hammers the point home.