Category: Barack Obama

Via NPR.  The audio link’s on the page.

Subtitled: Monkey Wrench or Cattle Prod? By Stephen Fleischman via Counterpunch.com.

“Here we go again,” murmured the old guard Democrats when Ralph Nader officially announced his candidacy for president in 2008, on Tim Russert’s “Meet the Press” show, Sunday, Feb.24th.

WARNING:

This essay contains multiple usages of a six-letter racial epithet starting with “N,” all of which are found within quotes.

I was at home this evening calling people in Texas for the Barack Obama campaign.  (I stop a half-hour earlier than the campaign recommends, having gotten reamed out a few times by various people for the sin of calling past 8:30 p.m. when all good people have already gone to sleep; I waited to write this diary until then.)  I was finishing up a message on someone’s machine when my call waiting beeped: I was getting a call from an unfamiliar number.  Because I was expecting a call back from a coordinator with the Obama for Texas campaign, I rushed through the end of the message and picked up the call.

Now that extremist pastor John Hagee has endorsed John McCain, Todd Beeton wants to know whether McCain will denounce Hagee. Of course, unlike with Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of Barack Obama, McCain actually appeared with Hagee, and actually happily accepted his endorsement. The better question, then, is whether Tim Russert will harangue McCain about it the way he harangued Obama about Farrakhan. Given that McCain actually appeared with Hagee, and actually happily accepted his endorsement, you would think Russert would be at least similarly concerned.

Here’s a quick note to corporate media hacks: As a liberal purist, I was no fan of Bill Clinton’s presidency; but when you joined the Republicans in attempting to hound him from office over a personal matter, I warmed to him. Defending him from idiots and assholes helped me focus on and appreciate President Clinton’s many positives. I’ve also been no fan of Hillary Clinton, but defending her from idiots and assholes, both in the corporate media and the shrillosphere, has had the same effect. She’s far from perfect, but she would be a fine president. I’m also no fan of Barack Obama, but the corporate media are already making me warm to the idea of his possible nomination. He’s also not perfect, but he also would be a fine president.

That’s how it works. We liberal skeptics do come to the defense of our more moderate political allies, when they are under unfair attack from idiots and assholes.

This is going to be a long year.

Frankly, I am glad I am not Barack Obama. But if ever this country needed someone of his intellectual capacity, strategic brilliance, ability to bring people together, it will be the first day he steps into the Oval office And brothers and sisters I am here tell you, the deep shit hole Bush has left us in will require not just Obama but a team of equally brilliant people to begin to address how we, as Americans, are going to climb out this seeming insurmountable abyss and turn our country around. But there is Obama and for that reason I have hope.

Cross-posted on [Kos]

Here is what Obama said with respect to public financing:

If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.

Here is what the “liberal” New York Times said he said:

If he won the nomination, he would limit himself to spending only the $85 million available in public financing between the convention and Election Day as long as his Republican opponent did the same.

The Times article does not quote Obama’s actual statement, nor does it link to it. Instead, it continually mischaracterizes it.

The authors are David Kirkpatrick and Jeff Zeleny.  Kirkpatrick, you may remember, “covered” conservatives for the Times for several years.  

The slant of the article is pure McCain spin, for example, stating that Obama’s statement constituted a “pledge” to spend only the $85 million public financing if his opponent would do the same. This is not what Obama said.  Saying that he would “aggressively pursue a publicly financed general election” clearly can encompass, for example, limits on Section 527 Swift Boat type groups.  But instead, the Times characterizes these as “new conditions,” which Obama is now adding to his initial “pledge.”

On the other hand, the article whitewashes McCain’s clear violations (e.g, using the pledge as collateral for a loan) as “technicalities.”  The impression is therefore created that Obama is the one with the real problem of “reneging” on a “pledge” to support public financing.

Kirkpatrick & Zeleny absurdly state that:

The issue may be more sensitive for Mr. Obama, though, because has run in part on his record as an advocate of stricter government integrity rules, including the public financing system.

I guess they haven’t heard that one of McCain’s raisons d’etre for being the straight-talkin’ “maverick” is his supposed commitment to public financing.

Finally, the Times rolls out the usual “reform” suspects, who have not been troubled by McCain’s blatant shenanigans, but are deeply concerned about Obama: The very serious Fred Werthheimer states:

This whole idea started with Senator Obama, and we think he and whoever the Republican nominee is ought to follow through, said Fred Wertheimer, founder of the advocacy group Democracy 21.

Yes, Fred.  The “whole idea” is to have real public financing that would not permit Ari Fleischer’s quarter billion dollar smear group to relentlessly go after Obama.

Either now, or shortly after he gets the nomination, Obama should consider laying out his entire conditions for true public financing (which would include muzzling Ari’s 2008 version of the Swift Boat liars).    

This is not really intended to foster a lot of discussion, although it’s great if it does.  I’m just depositing a little rudimentary social science research here for safe-keeping.  The dream of many social scientists is to be there taking notes right at the beginning of when a phenomenon begins.  I was reading some reports on the debate last night and the recent McCain stooge’s rally introduction, and suddenly it struck me that sooner or later people were going to hit on this phrase.  It turned out to be sooner — I’m about a month late to have spotted the start of the bud — but I still think this is worth noting here before the meme blossoms any further.

That meme is reference to this name: “Jesus Hussein Christ.”

I’m not even sure what it evokes, or what is intended to mean, and a review of the sources I cite below suggests that it can be positive, negative, or neutral to Obama, to Muslims, and maybe to Christians as well, and that has occurred to people with evident good senses of humor and those without.  But as of today it has occurred only 25 times, discounting repetitive entries, according to the Google, and if you look at the date stamps you can see it is going to be taking off, especially if Obama is nominated and even more so if he is then elected.

If it were purely absurdity, I’d find it merely witty.  But, of course, if you read the sources below — and I don’t recommend it, except for the funny bits from http://kinetic.seattle.wa.us, which is pretty good — you’ll see that this is also going to be used as a weapon against Obama.  I’m not sure what forearming this forewarning might offer, whether there’s a way to blunt the racism that some people appear to see and delight in it, but at least it’s here for our consideration.

During last night’s debate, Sen. Clinton once again tried to make an electoral issue out of Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement of Barack Obama, and the honor given Farrakhan by Obama’s church for his community activism in black communities.

First, let me say that the honor given Farrakhan is meaningless; it was for his activist works alone, which are deserving of recognition and get as little as they do because of all the many odious things Farrakhan says.  And of course, Barack Obama had nothing to do with the decision to give the honor.  So, in my opinion, not an actual issue.

But I want to talk instead about how Sen. Clinton blows her chances, rather than whether the opportunity is deserving.

There are two spectacular articles (well, perhaps more) over at Counterpunch right now. The first I’ll look at is Ralph Nader vs. the Fundamentalist Liberals by Michael Colby:

Hillary seems to be heading off a cliff as far as her campagin goes, so she needs some help!

To hear the press tell it, Sen. Barack Obama just completed his first term as high school class treasurer and is trying to parlay that triviality into a bid to become Leader of the Free World. Innumerable pundits, most notable for how often they are wrong, are incessantly yammering about Obama’s allegedly slender resume. Had they bothered to do a little homework themselves, they would know that he has a stellar academic history, has unselfishly toiled for non-profit, public interest groups, and has ten years of legislative experience in the Illinois and U.S. Senate.

It occurred to me that pundits, and the citizens they misinform, might benefit by having convenient access to some basic facts about the man who may be the next President of the United States of America.

So as a public service…

Cross-posted at dKos.

“We are a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants,” Barack Obama has frequently said on the campaign trail and in debates. I could not agree more.  However, listening to the debate in Austin the other night through my ex-pat lenses, I found myself mildly frustrated with the discussion of the immigration issue. Solving the legal and security issues is important, but what about the larger issue of why the United States continues to have such a serious illegal immigration problem in the first place?

After 10 years of increases in border patrols, partial walls, higher budgets, and more advanced sensor technology, shouldn’t we have seen some better results? Maybe we would have, if the security measures were actually the answer to the root cause of immigration. But they aren’t.