Obama likes his pretty tractor



Did he get enough bumper car rides in his youth?





A Clintonista sums up Obama

I particularly like the last paragraph

Barack Obama argues that he deserves the Democratic nomination and Hillary Clinton doesn't because he possesses superior "judgment," as he calls it, on the key issues we face as a nation. As definitive proof he offers one speech he made in 2002 during a reelection campaign for an Illinois senate seat in the most liberal district in the state, so liberal that no other position would have been viable. When he made that speech, Obama was not privy to the briefings by, among others, Secretary of State Colin Powell, in support of the Authorization of Use of Military Force as a diplomatic tool to push the international community to impose intrusive inspections on Saddam Hussein.

Would Obama have acted differently had he been in Washington or had he had the benefit of the arguments and the intelligence that the administration was offering to the Congress debating that resolution? During the 2002-2003 timeframe, he was a minor local official uninvolved in the national debate on the war so we can only judge from his own statements prior to the 2008 campaign. Obama repeated these points in a whole host of interviews prior to announcing his candidacy. On July 27, 2004, he told the Chicago Tribune on Iraq: "There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." In his book, The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, he wrote, "...on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and- dried." And, in 2006, he clearly said, "I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of US intelligence. And for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices."

I was involved in that debate in every step of the effort to prevent this senseless war and I profoundly resent Obama's distortion of George Bush's folly into Hillary Clinton's responsibility. I was in the middle of the debate in Washington. Obama wasn't there. I remember what was said and done. In fact, the administration lied in order to secure support for its war of choice, including cooking the intelligence and misleading Congress about the intent of the authorization. Senator Clinton's position, stated in her floor speech, was in favor of allowing the United Nations weapons inspectors to complete their mission and to build a broad international coalition. Bush rejected her path. It was his war of choice.

There is no credible reason to conclude that Obama would have acted any differently in voting for the authorization had he been in the Senate at that time. Indeed, he has said as much. The supposed intuitive judgment he exercised in his 2002 speech was nothing more than the pander of a local election campaign, just as his current assertions of superior judgment and scurrilous attacks on Hillary Clinton are a pander to those who now retroactively think the war was a mistake without bothering to acknowledge Senator Clinton's actual position at the time and instead fantasizing that she was nothing but a Bush clone. Obama willfully encourages and plays off this falsehood.

What should we make of Obama's other judgments in foreign affairs? Take Afghanistan, for example. It has been evident for some time that our efforts there are going badly and that cooperation and support from our NATO allies would be helpful. As chairman of the subcommittee on Senate Foreign Relations responsible for NATO and Europe, Obama could have used his lofty position actually to engage the issue and pressure the administration to take some action to improve our chance of success in that conflict against the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Of course, that would have involved holding hearings, questioning administration witnesses, and taking a position and offering alternatives. That is what we expect that from senators in a democracy. It is called oversight.

But, instead, Obama, by his own admission, offers the excuse that he has been too busy running for president to do anything substantive, such as direct his staff to organize a single hearing. "Well, first of all," Obama was forced to confess in the Democratic debate in Ohio on February 26, "I became chairman of this committee at the beginning of this campaign, at the beginning of 2007. So it is true that we haven't had oversight hearings on Afghanistan." To date, his subcommittee has held no policy hearings at all -- none. At the same time that Obama claimed he was too busy campaigning to do anything substantive, racking up one of the worst attendance records in the Senate, Senator Clinton chaired extensive hearings of the Subcommittee on Superfund and Environmental Health and attended many others as a member of the Armed Service Committee.

As a consequence of Obama's dereliction of duty on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a feckless administration has had absolutely no oversight as it careens from disaster to disaster in Afghanistan, including the central governments loss of control over 70 percent of the country and yet another bumper crop of opium to fuel the efforts of the Taliban and their terrorist allies. Of course, if you don't hold hearings, conduct oversight, make recommendations or sponsor legislation, then you have no record to explain or defend and you are free to take whatever position is convenient when attacking those who actually did address issues. Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Obama holds forth on Afghanistan, chiding the administration and our allies as though he's a profile in courage and not someone who has abandoned his post in establishing accountability.

On Iran and the question of designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, the junior senator from Illinois was not quite so clever at avoiding taking a position. He first co-sponsored the "Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007," which contained explicit language identifying the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. He subsequently claimed to oppose the Kyl-Lieberman sense of the Senate resolution proposing the same thing. Obama's accountability problem here is that he didn't show up for the vote on that resolution -- a vote that would have put him on record. Then he declined to sign on to a letter put forward by Senator Clinton making explicit that the resolution could not be used as authority to take military action. All we have is Obama's rhetoric juxtaposed with his co-sponsorship of a piece of legislation that proposed what he says he opposed.

Obama's gyrations on Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran are not the actions of one imbued with superior intuitive judgment, but rather the machinations of a political opportunist looking to avoid having his fingerprints on any issue that might be controversial, and require real judgment, while preserving his freedom to bludgeon his adversary for actually taking positions as elected office demands. It is hard to discern whether Senator Obama is a man of principle, but it is clear that he is not a man of substance. And that judgment, based on his hollow record, is inescapable.

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Obamaholics Unanimous

Now that Barack Obama is closing in on the Democratic nomination, some are wondering whether the media will be tougher in their coverage. There's a better question: is it possible to be any softer? The media writ large have been sounding like they're covering a messiah more than a man. So was Hillary Clinton right to complain that Barack Obama has been more celebrated rather than vetted?

Let's be clear. Hillary Clinton has been the beneficiary of so many cotton-candy profiles and "I Am Woman" honorifics that it's almost impossible that her bad press will ever come anywhere close to balancing out her mountains of puff over the last 15 years. The "rough" press she's been getting since Super Tuesday is merely the political prognosticators noticing she's getting her clock cleaned by 18 to 20 points in a lot of states. Even so, she's still being awarded softball interviews - like the latest in a long series of twinkly Katie Couric gal-pal segments on "60 Minutes."

It's also clear that when it comes to Hillary Clinton complaining about the need for Obama to be "vetted" on scandal stories, we should all fall to the floor laughing. If she thinks she's had a rough scrubbing on cattle futures and travel office cronyism and Whitewater lawyering and Puerto Rican terrorist pardons and on and on, she's living in a parallel universe.

But she's not wrong that the media love's for Obama surpasses their devotion to her. Just start with the way they all flail with outrage when a conservative uses his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. It's not a lie. It's not a distortion. It's his name. Chris Matthews thinks this tactic is "vicious," this "ethnic stuff" is "evil." Keith Olbermann even sneered at his fellow Bush-basher Jon Stewart for making a joke out of Obama's complete name at the Oscars. The "mainstream" media don't just feel Obama's pain, they loudly object to any hostility whatsoever.

Ridiculing Obama's middle name stopped being funny a while ago. But the idea that the Obamaholics on TV can pound the desk and proclaim that these tame middle-name jokes are beyond the pale is utterly ridiculous. Are Olbermann and Matthews really going to claim they've been gentle with Bush and Cheney? Olbermann can suggest Bush is a totalitarian who has commenced the "beginning of the end of America," and Matthews can call Bush a "sadistic murderer," and hope for a modern-day Nuremberg trial, as if the Bushies were the Nazis, and then they have the chutzpah to complain about middle names?

Many liberals in the media object to "whispers" that Obama is a Muslim. On CBS's "60 Minutes," reporter Steve Kroft told Obama that the idea that Obama's a Muslim "popped upon our radar screen all the time." Obama asked: "Did you correct them, Steve?" Kroft said yes. Obama decried a "systematic e-mail smear campaign" that's offensive not only to him, "a devout Christian," but to Muslims because of the "fear-mongering."

Kroft then turned on Mrs. Clinton and pressed her to deny that her campaign was spreading this mangy stuff. Hillary replied that Obama's not a Muslim, "as far as I know." Kroft kept complaining: "It's just scurrilous." But Kroft made no attempt to press Obama on what his actual religious beliefs are, or how "devout" he is in attending services every Sunday. These matters make liberal reporters uncomfortable. What makes them comfortable is trying to convince the audience that their fellow liberal Obama is a heroic victim.

But like Olbermann and Matthews, Kroft has a very flexible, very partisan definition of what is "scurrilous" in media coverage. One week before on the same "60 Minutes" program, CBS reporter Scott Pelley publicized wildly unsubstantiated charges against former Bush aide and strategist Karl Rove, who allegedly sought to ruin the crooked Democratic governor of Alabama Don Siegelman, now in prison. Pelley set up an accuser named Jill Simpson: "Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman...In a compromising sexual position with one of his aides."

Brit Hume of Fox News pointed out the next day that the Associated Press reported that CBS's star witness had never made that allegation before to reporters or lawyers in hours upon hours of interviews and a sworn affidavit. Hume added that Karl Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin said no one from CBS approached Rove to give him a chance to respond to these off-the-wall sex-picture charges.

The dramatic double standard of our media elite - a hyperbolic outrage at any criticism of Barack Obama, even as they insult and smear Republicans without restraint or regret, or evidence - is one reason why it's going to hard to find the audacity to hope for media fairness or balance in this upcoming general election campaign.

Source





Mrs Obama's latest whine

Obama begins with a broad assessment of life in America in 2008, and life is not good: we're a divided country, we're a country that is "just downright mean," we are "guided by fear," we're a nation of cynics, sloths, and complacents. "We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day," she said, as heads bobbed in the pews. "Folks are just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over my lifetime. And, doggone it, I'm young. Forty-four!"

From these bleak generalities, Obama moves into specific complaints. Used to be, she will say, that you could count on a decent education in the neighborhood. But now there are all these charter schools and magnet schools that you have to "finagle" to get into. (Obama herself attended a magnet school, but never mind.) Health care is out of reach ("Let me tell you, don't get sick in America"), pensions are disappearing, college is too expensive, and even if you can figure out a way to go to college you won't be able to recoup the cost of the degree in many of the professions for which you needed it in the first place. "You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt," Obama said. "See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn't have trust funds. I'm still waiting for Barack's trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s'posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!"

First Ladies have traditionally gravitated toward happy topics like roadside flower beds, so it comes as a surprise that Obama's speech is such an unrelenting downer. Obama acknowledged to me that some advisers have lobbied her to take a sunnier tone, with little success. "For me," she said, "you can talk about policies and plans and experience and all that. We usually get bogged down in that in a Presidential campaign, over the stuff that I think doesn't matter. . . . I mean, I guess I could go into Barack's policies and rattle them off. But that's what he's for." In Cheraw, Obama belittled the idea that the Clinton years were ones of opportunity and prosperity: "The life that I'm talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. . . . So if you want to pretend like there was some point over the last couple of decades when your lives were easy, I want to meet you!"

After the speech, Obama was whisked into the church basement. A clutch of people gathered nearby, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. But when she emerged into the chilly morning air, she didn't linger long with her well-wishers. She can seem squeamish about politicking, put off by the awkward stagecraft of glad-handing and the small-group discussions-Michelle, five or six women, and, as she put it one day in Wisconsin, "five thousand cameras"-that her staff bills as "intimate conversations." But she thrives in large venues. Cindy Moelis said, "The first time she got feedback on being such a wonderful speaker, I think when people said, `Wow, you're really good at that,' she goes, `Why's everybody surprised?' "

Source





There are policy reasons behind the "Hussein" coverup

Is pronouncing a man's middle name tantamount to in sulting him? In Sen. Barack Obama's case, the answer appears to be yes. Sen. Hillary Clinton has already apologized because her allies used the unmentionable middle name - ostensibly without her consent. Last week, it was Sen. John McCain's turn to apologize, because the host of a meeting he attended was rash enough to pronounce the seven-letter word. The word in question is "Hussein," Obama's middle name and the name of his Kenyan Muslim father. Obama has accepted the apologies as if using his father's name was, indeed, an insult. Why?

Well, "Hussein" supposedly has a negative resonance with many Americans, reminding them of Saddam Hussein, the late Iraqi dictator. The fact that the name Hussein means "most benign" or "very beautiful" in Arabic isn't enough to persuade Obama and his pr gurus to treat it more kindly. (Hussein is also one of the most popular names for Muslims, especially Shiites.) Obama's problems shouldn't end there. "Barack" is also Arabic, from "barakah," meaning "blessing." "Obama," meanwhile, is a word in Swahili - a language based on Arabic that serves as the lingua franca of East Africa; it refers to members of his father's tribe who converted to Islam. In other words, "Barack Hussein Obama" is a perfectly common identifier for someone with an ethnic East African Muslim background.

Nevertheless, Obama insists that, while his father and paternal grandfather were both Muslims, he himself was never one in any way. In Islam, of course, anyone born of a Muslim father is automatically regarded as Muslim. But Obama is hardly obliged to abide by what Muslims may or may not think of his religious status. As a citizen of a free and democratic state, he can cross from one faith to anther or have no faith at all without losing any of his rights, including the right to stand for the highest office.

What's troubling about Obama's approach to the mini-storm stirred by his political enemies over his name is what may look like an attempt at obfuscation. He has behaved as if he did have a family secret, and as if the name Hussein was something to be ashamed of - or, worse still, as if a Muslim background is somehow a handicap for an American politician in ways that Christian, Jewish, Mormon or any other faith is not. That, of course, is hurtful to Muslims - a majority of whom reject the anti-American diatribes of the radical and violent minority.

It would've been better for Obama to state the situation clearly at the start:

I was born in Hawaii and spent part of my childhood in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country. Half of my family background is Islamic. My paternal grandfather and father were both Kenyan Muslims. My father gave me an Islamic forename and middle name. But my mother was from a Christian background, and I chose her faith.

Most Americans judge a candidate based on his politics rather than his parents' religious background. In a country where everyone has a rich ethnic and religious background, Obama's family story wouldn't have sounded that exotic. Some Americans may have even regarded the Islamic part of Obama's family story as a plus for the candidate, if only because the biggest challenge to US global leadership todayscomes from forces speaking in Islam's name.

Obama's efforts to distance himself from Islam contrasts with his innovative approach to US relations with its Islamist challengers. President Bush has chosen the "iron fist" - invading Afghanistan and Iraq, quarantining the Islamic Republic in Iran, keeping Syria's Baathist regime in check and helping a dozen Muslim states fight al Qaeda or its variants. McCain and Clinton offer variations on the same theme, albeit with twists and turns to satisfy their constituencies.

By contrast, Obama offers a policy of dialogue and accommodation. He has opposed listing Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization and proposed a grand bargain with Syria's rulers. He is even prepared to ignore two UN Security Council resolutions that require Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program as a precondition for talks at the highest level. He has campaigned for a formal congressional move to prevent Bush from taking any military action against Tehran.

In an important symbolic move designed to signal an end of the special relationship between Israel and America, Obama has become the first major presidential candidate in 25 years not to commit himself to transferring the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Last but not least, Obama has promised to withdraw from Iraq in his first year in office - meeting a key demand of all radical Islamist forces, Sunni and Shiite.

The message is clear: Obama wants a new relationship with radical forces in the Islamic world while distancing America from its traditional regional allies. In other words, he proposes to reverse policies that have taken shape over more than six decades under 12 successive American presidents. It's this revolutionary idea that deserves to be examined and debated, not the origin and meaning of Obama's middle name.

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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Democratic Draw



Now Hillary Clinton knows how Republicans feel. Usually, GOP candidates have to overcome media disdain and establishment calls to declare defeat and get out of the race. This time she's the target of the collective liberal swoon for Barack Obama. But after her victory yesterday in Ohio and a nailbiter in Texas, we see little reason that the New York Senator shouldn't fight on.

That wouldn't please the Democratic panjandrums who desperately want a nominee now that John McCain has wrapped up the Republican race. The party superdelegates who were all for Mrs. Clinton when she was "inevitable" are now hoping she'll drop out and spare them a painful decision. A herd of them -- they prefer the camouflage of numbers -- have reportedly even been plotting to break together for the Illinois orator.

But yesterday's message from actual Democratic voters was hardly a decisive verdict for Mr. Obama. The Illinois Senator continued to do well among better educated, wealthier, more liberal and younger voters. He maintained his domination among African-Americans. But Mrs. Clinton regained the advantages that she showed earlier in the campaign among blue-collar Democrats, union households, women, seniors and Hispanics.

Perhaps most important, according to the exit polls, she was able to expose a significant vulnerability that Mr. Obama would have against Mr. McCain -- his lack of experience on national security. She made that a major theme of the campaign's final days, running a much-noted TV spot about a President needing to answer the phone at 3 a.m. Mr. Obama turned that into a retort about Mrs. Clinton's bad "judgment" in voting for the Iraq war, which resonated with antiwar voters.

But Mrs. Clinton seems to have won the larger argument, as voters in Ohio said she would make a better Commander in Chief by 57% to 40%. If even Democrats have their doubts about Mr. Obama's national security credentials, he'll have an even harder task persuading independents in November against the Arizona war veteran.

Mr. Obama retained his narrow delegate lead after last night, and must still be considered the favorite. But that's all the more reason for Democrats to want to make him compete in more primaries. Democrats have a history of nominating candidates who come out of nowhere but turn out to have what the larger electorate decides are major liabilities. Think Michael Dukakis, or Jimmy Carter's near collapse after a 22-point lead in the summer of 1976.

According to the exit polls, a mere 57% of Democrats in Ohio, and 52% in Texas, gave Mr. Obama credit for having a "clear plan for the country." The media have also only begun to explore the Senator's rise in the boiler room of Chicago politics, as with the fraud trial of his former fund raiser Tony Rezko that started this week. If he is the nominee, Mr. Obama will be stronger in the fall as a result of the greater scrutiny now.

Mrs. Clinton would bring her own weaknesses into the fall campaign, not least her implausibility as an agent of "change." We certainly understand the desire of many Democrats to be free at last from their codependency with both Clintons. But they should also make sure Mr. Obama isn't one more leap into the November unknown.

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Media finally a bit embarrassed by their Obamamania

Life imitating art or just a coincidence? A study of campaign coverage found the media took a sharper look at Barack Obama the week after "Saturday Night Live" spoofed journalists enthralled by his candidacy. The NBC comedy show on Feb. 23 opened with a mock debate where journalists were rough on Hillary Clinton while being starry-eyed about Obama. It matched complaints the Clinton campaign had made - and she even referenced the comedy skit during a real debate last week.

During the week, Obama was the dominant person in 69 percent of presidential campaign stories, according to a study by Project for Excellence in Journalism. That's the biggest percentage one candidate had received in any week this year. Many of the stories took a tough look at Obama, such as a Feb. 25 ABC "World News" study on his Illinois legislative record and a "CBS Evening News" report on his career three nights later.

It's hard to say whether "SNL" acted as a de-facto assignment editor, since some of the stories were probably being prepared before the NBC show aired, but it did seem to crystallize a thought that had been percolating, said Mark Jurkowitz, the project's associate director. "There were a lot of factors at play," Jurkowitz said. "But there's no question the skit, if nothing else, was perfectly timed."

With no primaries last week, news outlets had the time to look at other stories, as well as the time to look at their own performance. The Washington Post, New York Times and ABC's "Good Morning America" all ran stories addressing whether the media has been fairly covering the Obama-Clinton contest. "Saturday Night Live" this past weekend opened its show with another fake debate where journalists played easy for Obama. This time, the skit ended with an appearance by Clinton herself.

The project studies 48 different media outlets, including newspapers, Web sites and television networks, as part of its examination of campaign coverage.

Source





Slippery money standards from the Obama campaign



Presidential candidate Barack Obama has made "audacity" a campaign theme -- and it's proving to be an apt word for his relationship with campaign finance laws. A case in point is his recent outrage at the activities of a pro-Hillary Clinton 527 group called the American Leadership Project. Headed by former Bill Clinton aide Roger Salazar, ALP queued up a series of ads to run in Ohio and Texas reminding voters that speeches don't solve problems on health care and the economy. The ads don't mention Mr. Obama by name.

Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe nonetheless cried "smear campaign" and said that groups like ALP amounted to "Swift-Boat style" attacks. Mr. Obama's lawyer, Bob Bauer, said he believed the group was breaking the law by not registering as a political committee. And because it's not incorporated, its actions would expose its donors and aides to criminal liability and a "very, very miserable experience." There would be a "reckoning," he vowed.

If the idea was to scare off the group's donors, it almost worked. The ads didn't appear for days leading up to Tuesday's primary, until funding from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union came through to get ALP spots on air in Ohio and Texas on Monday and Tuesday. The American Leadership Project argues it doesn't qualify as a "political committee" because its proposed ads stop well short of "express advocacy." Instead it should fall under the category of "electioneering communications." We'll leave further legal parsing to the theologians of the election laws.

For all its indignation, the Obama campaign doesn't mind playing it both ways when convenient. One example is the Senator's own easy relationship with spending on his behalf by organized labor. According to the Federal Election Commission, the Service Employees International Union was spending some $1.4 million to support his candidacy in Ohio and Texas, including direct mail, phone-banking and union outlays to pay for "volunteers." Meanwhile, the Fund For America, another so-called 527 group funded by George Soros and the SEIU, is funneling $400,000 to groups buying ads to attack John McCain. What gives?

Mr. Obama had no trouble complaining when John Edwards was the beneficiary of such spending. In Iowa, an SEIU local threw a reported $750,000 into TV ads for Mr. Edwards, and Mr. Obama criticized what he called "huge, unregulated contributions from special interests." He insisted such efforts were "a way of getting around the campaign finance laws."

Mr. Obama calls his campaign a new kind of politics, and he's to be commended for raising around $50 million in February alone, much of it from donors who aren't the usual suspects. But his selective indignation on spending by so-called 527 groups and his recent waffling on federal funds for the general election don't fit the image. The campaign finance laws may be a contraption, but Mr. Obama has lashed himself to their restrictions. As self-styled and vocal "reformers," Barack Obama and John McCain have both proven this election season that campaign-finance reform makes hypocrites of everyone.

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Obama's Well-Aged Beef

The television images are striking. A handsome young candidate, an adoring audience, a beautifully delivered speech in which he offers to bring us together as a nation, and speaks of his "movement for change:" "I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years" he says, "re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s. I don't want to pit Red America against Blue America, I want to be the President of the United States of America." Nice rhetoric. Is it real or is it theater? Relax: it's theater.

A visit to Barack Obama's website reveals that this is not a candidate who is offering a new left-right synthesis-a new way of looking at our politics and bridging the old Red-Blue divide. Instead, what we see in 60 pages of policy proposals and commitments are the same old ideas of the Democratic Left. Even the rhetoric is old.

On economics: "I'm in this race to take tax breaks away from companies that are moving jobs overseas and put them in the pockets of hard working Americans who deserve it. And I won't raise the minimum wage every ten years-I will raise it to keep pace so that workers don't fall behind. That's why I am in it. To protect the American worker."

The same old disputes come back to us with this on unions: "Obama will ...fight for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act" (this is the failed proposal to eliminate the secret ballot on unionization, of which Obama was a co-sponsor). And this on Social Security: "Obama will protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries alike...he does not believe it is necessary or fair to hardworking seniors to raise the retirement age. Obama is strongly opposed to privatizing Social Security." And this on taxes: "Obama is committed to repealing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans."

On foreign policy: "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months." On Iran: "Obama believes that we have not exhausted our non-military options in confronting this threat; in many ways, we have yet to try them." And of course the belief that we can talk our enemies out of their hatred: "The United States is trapped by the Bush-Cheney approach to diplomacy that refuses to talk to leaders we don't like."

In the 60 pages of words, there's hardly a major new idea or an idea that departs significantly from the Democratic Party's agenda since the New Deal. It's all here: the activist government, the ambitious programs without reference to costs, the appeal to some people's sense of victimization. There is also one striking omission-a list of anything that Senator Obama has actually done in the course of his brief career to advance any of these goals.

The point is that there is nothing here to back up a candidacy that is based on bringing the nation together to effect change. It's a rehash of the same policies and programs that the Democratic Left has been pushing--largely without success--for the last 40 years. For some people, as least, the era of big government is not over.

What appears to qualify this candidacy as a candidacy of change is not the policies or programs it relies on but the fact that the same old ideas are coming from a new and telegenic messenger. It is no wonder, then, that this messenger has excited and attracted young people. If you've never heard this message before, and if you don't have any background in the politics of the last two generations, you might think these ideas will be generally accepted. But anyone who has followed American politics over more than the last year knows that there is real disagreement in this country about the role of government, about trade, about taxes, about confronting the nation's enemies. If Senator Obama is ultimately elected, and if his program ultimately adopted, it will certainly bring about change, but no one should be under the illusion that this is a message of reconciliation, or that the American people as a whole will rally around these ideas. Ask George McGovern.

The Obama program has been attacked with the slogan "Where's the beef?" This attack is misplaced. There's plenty of beef; the problem is that it's very well-aged.

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(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Obama as a Rorschach inkblot

He is so non-specific that everyone thinks he will do what they want

Phil Sowell, a retired government official, scarcely pauses for breath when asked what Barack Obama would do as President: "He will bring peace to the Middle East and anywhere in the world where there is tragedy."

But Larry Milton, 56, thinks that "he will be more worried about what happens here and less worried about other countries". Carrie Thompson hopes that he will "address global poverty and other issues which Republicans keep overlooking", while Ron Gaynor, 52, a lifelong Republican, says: "He will bring the power of veto and say `no' to a lot of this government spending - we seem to give money to people all around the globe."

They are all waiting to hear the man himself speak. It is a familiar scene, repeated across America dozens of times in recent weeks. Long queues snake around a sports hall - comprising people of all ages, races and social class - to gather under the Democrat presidential contender's slogan of "change we can believe in". But what, exactly, is this change in which they all believe? The Times conducted more than 50 interviews at a rally in Westerville, Ohio, where many supporters made plain they have contradictory - and burgeoning - expectations of what "President Obama" would do.

Sarah Jaffy, 41, says: "I really like his healthcare plan. And there's another policy - it's my favourite - ooh, I can't remember right now." Erin Henderson, 18, has gone with a gaggle of friends to see Mr Obama and she declares: "We're all really excited about him and we heard he might make it easier to get into college."

Today these voters could tip the balance of the Democratic presidential race Mr Obama's way. If Hillary Clinton loses Ohio and Texas, most observers - including her husband, Bill - say her candidacy will fail. She has become increasingly frustrated at seeing her poll leads evaporate in the heat of Mr Obama's phenomenal appeal. She rails against his soaring oratory, saying: "I could stand up here and say, `Let's just get everybody together, let's get unified.' The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know that we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect."

But Mr Obama's coalition of voters suggests his message is succeeding in reaching out, not only across the racial divisions that have long scarred America, but also over the partisan political landscape that has characterised the Clinton-Bush era. As such, he resembles another charismatic youthful politician who made ephemeral promises of hope, change and a new approach to government: Tony Blair in the UK 11 years ago.

It is a comparison not lost on Mr Obama's admirers, who answer charges that support for him is a passing fad by pointing out that the former Prime Minister won successive landslide election victories before his star began to fade. And, while British is politics is often dragged down by cynicism, the optimistic American psyche that is always open to a promise of "new leadership" and a "new beginning" may keep Mr Obama afloat for longer. Mr Blair, however, could offer evidence for his claim to stand for postpartisan politics, having defeated the old left of the Labour Party by dumping the Clause IV promise of mass nationalisation and steering the party towards the "radical centre" over three years in opposition.

Mr Obama, by contrast, can only really show a campaign that is winning support from many independent and Republican voters - despite having, according to a study by the National Journal, the most liberal voting record of any US Senator.

Mrs Clinton last week cited a passage from Mr Obama's book, entitled The Audacity of Hope, "where he said that he is a blank screen and people of widely different views project what they want to hear". The full quote, however, is more interesting. Mr Obama said he had many orthodox opinions as a Democrat and a black man, before adding: "That is not all I am. I also think my party can be smug, detached and dogmatic." He then set out views - on the free market, patriotism, spirituality, and a politics not based solely on "victimhood" - which he predicted will "get me into trouble".

Although admitting that he was new enough to be a blank screen on which "people of vastly different political stripes project their own views", Mr Obama added: "I am bound to disappoint some, if not all of them."

But, perhaps, not quite yet. At Mr Obama's Westerville rally, Eric Whitaker, a member of his coterie of friends travelling with him, discusses with passing British journalists any lessons to be learned from the Blair experience. "I guess the big challenge of leadership is disappointing your supporters at a rate they can deal with," he says. As he speaks, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a national security expert, is on the stage explaining why Mr Obama is qualified to be commander-in-chief. "It's just how you feel about it," he says. "I trust him."

Sitting in the audience, Alex Dukeman, 17, says that she expects Mr Obama to introduce universal healthcare. But isn't his plan voluntary while Mrs Clinton promises a compulsory mandate? "I just think he is a likable guy and he inspires people," she replies. Zach Adriaenssens, 20, says that Mr Obama is a "unifier" who can negotiate with Republicans "and will sort healthcare".

Donny Murray, 21, says that Mr Obama "has definitely got a better plan" for tackling global warming. How so? "I'm not sure about the specifics, I just think he'll get more people involved," he says. Freda Graan, 27, a Spanish teacher at Ohio State university, explains: "If you listen to Hillary, she says, `I will do this'. Obama says, `We will do this'. I'm not scared to be idealistic, it's my responsibility as a voter not to be cynical."

Yusuf Abdi, 55, says: "He will change everything - healthcare, no war, education. He can do anything." Karen Clark, a teacher, 58, says that she has switched her support from Clinton because "I want to be on the winning side".

When Mr Obama arrives on the platform, many in the crowd hold cameras above their heads to capture the moment, giving the appearance of a massed double-armed salute. As ever, a woman screams: "We love you Obama!" He replies, as usual, "I, uh, love you back."

His speech is low-key, lacking some of his higher flights of rhetoric but heavy with policy specifics, possibly a sign of how sensitive he remains to Mrs Clinton's recent criticism, which he spends a long time rebutting. But his proposals are not "tough choices", favoured by Mr Blair, but of a type that will not make him new enemies. Mr Obama, for instance, talks of a "middle-class tax cut" which will "make life more affordable for 95 per cent of Americans".

Outside the hall is Robin Lease, 52, a lycra-clad teacher who has just jogged two miles from Mrs Clinton's rally across town. "I wanted to see them both speak," she says. "I would tend to vote for Obama - I think he would be more liberal on social programmes," she says. "But then again, I'm a Republican. I know that sounds confusing."

Source





Obama losing the Jewish vote

Brooklyn Assemblyman Dov Hikind yesterday predicted that Jewish voters would make "a mass movement toward Sen. McCain" if Barack Obama knocks Hillary Rodham Clinton out of the race in tomorrow's critical Democratic primaries. Hikind, an Orthodox Jew whose Borough Park district includes the largest Hasidic bloc in the United States, blasted Obama for what he called his half-hearted support of Israel and his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., who has repeatedly praised anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has endorsed Obama.

Hikind, a Democrat who has yet to endorse a candidate for president, said Obama had not satisfactorily distanced himself from Wright, his Chicago-based personal pastor, noting, "This is a man who thinks Farrakhan is a great guy and God's gift to the world." Hikind went on, "Obama has said that you can be a supporter of Israel even if you're for giving up land to the Arabs, which is true - but for a guy running for president to take a position like this in advance of getting into office, combined with everything else going on in the Middle East, that scares the hell out of me. "There are a hell of a lot of Jews who are concerned about these issues, and they go way beyond Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, people I describe as conservative Reagan/Giuliani Democrats," said Hikind, who backed Ronald Reagan's presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984.

Hikind's warning about Jewish concerns over Obama are being widely but privately voiced among top New York Democrats. "There is anxiety, there is concern, on the part of a lot of important Jewish Democrats in New York," one of the state's most influential Democratic activists told The Post.

Hikind, meanwhile, said he believed last week's controversy over Obama appearing in Somali garb during a visit to his father's native Kenya would have no impact on Jewish voters. "Something like that by itself doesn't mean anything," he said. Obama, who has repeatedly condemned Farrakhan for making anti-Semitic remarks, rejected his endorsement under pressure from rival Hillary Rodham Clinton during a debate last week. But while Obama has pushed Wright into the background of his campaign, Obama remains a member of his church.

Source





Is Obama hypocritical or ignorant when it comes to NAFTA?

Barack Obama says he'll revive the art of American diplomacy, which sounds nice. We're not sure how this promise squares, however, with the diplomatic incident his campaign has caused in Canada, of all unlikely places.

Last week, Canada's CTV television network reported on a leaked memo from a Canadian diplomat casting doubt on Mr. Obama's sincerity. The memo reported that Mr. Obama's chief economic adviser, University of Chicago professor Austan Goolsbee, had told Canadian officials that Mr. Obama's vow to unilaterally withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement was simply campaign rhetoric aimed at Ohio primary voters. This week, Mr. Goolsbee said that's not what he meant at all when he attended a February 8 meeting at Chicago's Canadian consulate. Perhaps something got lost in translation.

Mr. Goolsbee maintains that he did say that Mr. Obama recognizes the benefits of free trade. But, Mr. Goolsbee adds, he also emphasized that Mr. Obama's objective is to strengthen Nafta's labor and environmental provisions. The accommodating Canadian Embassy nonetheless tried to smooth things over yesterday with a statement saying that "there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA." Which is too bad, because the apparent revelation that Mr. Obama doesn't believe his own trade rhetoric is the best news we've heard about the Illinois Senator's economic policy.

In Mr. Goolsbee's defense, we too have recognized a language barrier separating the U.S. and Canada, particularly when we enjoy watching NHL games on television. In their understated manner, Canadian analysts describe blows to the head as "messages" and sticks to the face as "taking liberties." So perhaps Mr. Goolsbee's obligatory nod toward the benefits of trade was interpreted in Canada as a passionate defense of free markets.

However, if the Chicago professor was in fact sending a signal that Mr. Obama does not really intend to destroy America's largest trade relationship, we can only say, "Kick save, and a beauty!" Leaving Nafta alone would be great news for Ohioans in particular, as the Cato Institute's Daniel Griswold recently noted. Canada and Mexico buy more than half of Ohio's exports, and since Nafta's 1993 enactment the U.S. economy has added a net 26 million new jobs. The average real hourly compensation (wages and benefits) of workers has climbed 23% and real median household net worth has increased by a third.

We suspect Mr. Goolsbee knows all of this, because the benefits of free trade are one of the few things that economists of the left and right agree on. The Commerce Department reports that while countries with which we enjoy free trade agreements generate only 7.5% of global GDP, they consume more than 42% of U.S. exports.

And along with importing our products, countries seeking open trade with America are also required to embrace the rule of law as a condition for such agreements. Colombia's inspiring progress shows that foreign policy benefits may exceed even the economic gains. But a rejection of the pending Colombian free trade deal, a rewrite of Nafta, and a literal embrace of Mr. Obama's campaign rhetoric would send a disastrous signal over our borders, north and south. Here's hoping Canadian officials heard Mr. Goolsbee correctly the first time.

Source





Some good satire

Via Taranto



I agree with Kim Morrison that Barack Obama would be a great president. I have hope that he can provide free health insurance for everyone. I have hope that he can bring our soldiers home and make the world a safer place. I have hope that he can protect Americans from poverty by printing more money at the mint.

And, I have hope that he can make me a taller, more attractive, wealthier person, immune to all illnesses. The best part is that all of these will be accomplished at absolutely no cost to me.

Some skeptics would say that he can't do these things because he hasn't had enough leadership experience, foreign policy experience, or government experience. Some would say that Obama can't provide for all our needs without doubling taxes. And, some would say that he hasn't provided one piece of a specific plan to reach these goals.

Well, to those people I ask, "Where is your hope?" All these years I've been creating accomplishments and gathering experience to list on my resume. From now on, I'll just list my hopes and plans. All that work was so unnecessary.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Obama: Sermon on Mount Justifies Same-Sex Unions

Strange theology indeed. Homosexuality is one of the things that the Bible is clearest about -- that it is an abomination to God

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told a crowd at Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio, Sunday that he believes the Sermon on the Mount justifies his support for legal recognition of same-sex unions. He also told the crowd that his position in favor of legalized abortion does not make him "less Christian." "I don't think it [a same-sex union] should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state," said Obama. "If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans." [Just what exactly makes one of the great Pauline epistles "obscure"?] St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans condemns homosexual acts as unnatural and sinful.

Obama's mention of the Sermon on the Mount in justifying legal recognition of same-sex unions may have been a reference to the Golden Rule: "Do to others what you would have them do to you." Or it may have been a reference to another famous line: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged."

The Sermon, recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, includes the Lord's Prayer, the Beatitudes, an endorsement of scriptural moral commandments ("anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven"), and condemnations of murder, divorce and adultery. It also includes a warning: "Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves."

The passage from St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, which Obama dismissed as "obscure," discusses people who knew God but turned against him: "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised," wrote St. Paul. "Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion." .....

In Ohio on Sunday, before mentioning the Sermon on the Mount, Obama insisted he was against "gay marriage" and did not mention his support for allowing same-sex couples to adopt children and have the same "family" status as heterosexual couples. "I will tell you that I don't believe in gay marriage, but I do think that people who are gay and lesbian should be treated with dignity and respect and that the state should not discriminate against them," said Obama on Sunday. "So, I believe in civil unions that allow a same-sex couple to visit each other in a hospital or transfer property to each other. I don't think it should be called marriage, but I think that it is a legal right that they should have that is recognized by the state. If people find that controversial then I would just refer them to the Sermon on the Mount, which I think is, in my mind, for my faith, more central than an obscure passage in Romans. That's my view."

More here




Obama, Israel, and the Palestinians: Who are the rubes?

Is the Imperfect Vessel everything to everybody? We have already seen this week that with regard to NAFTA Barack Obama seems to have told Ohio voters one thing and Canadian diplomats another. Has he done the same thing with the Israelis and the Palestinians? Check out this interesting article from Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. A year ago Abuniemah reviewed Obama's many recent statements in support of Israel, but suggested that they did not reflect his genuine opinions:

Over the years since I first saw Obama speak I met him about half a dozen times, often at Palestinian and Arab-American community events in Chicago including a May 1998 community fundraiser at which Edward Said was the keynote speaker. In 2000, when Obama unsuccessfully ran for Congress I heard him speak at a campaign fundraiser hosted by a University of Chicago professor. On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.

As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, "Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He referred to my activism, including columns I was contributing to the The Chicago Tribune critical of Israeli and US policy, "Keep up the good work!"

Assume, for a moment, that Ali Abunimah had genuine insight into Barack Obama's opinions four years ago. Is his recently expressed strong support for Israel fabricated? Is it permanent, or will he in fact "be more up front" after he is elected? Or, has Barack Obama actually changed his mind? Who are the rubes to be fooled this time?

Source




Obama invents his own facts again

Post below lifted from Taranto. See the original for links

Obama criticized Clinton expressly for failing to read the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons capabilities, a report available at the time of her October 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. "She didn't give diplomacy a chance. And to this day, she won't even admit that her vote was a mistake--or even that it was a vote for war," Obama said.

"When it came time to make the most important foreign policy decision of our generation the decision to invade Iraq Senator Clinton got it wrong," Obama said.

He said that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a fellow Democrat from neighboring West Virginia, had read the intelligence estimate as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and had voted against the war resolution.

Rockefeller, who is now chairman of that committee, endorsed Obama on Friday and campaigned with him on Saturday.

Just one problem: As blogress Clarice Feldman points out, and as the Senate roll-call confirms, Rockefeller voted for the war. We guess it was too good to check!





Obama's political background is in shifty Chicago

On Tuesday, Barack Obama may well wrap up the Democratic nomination. Yet how he rose so quickly in Chicago's famously suspect politics -- and who his associates were there -- has received little scrutiny. That may change today as the trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, Mr. Obama's friend of two decades and his campaign fund-raiser, gets under way in federal court in Chicago. Mr. Rezko, a master fixer in Illinois politics, is charged with money laundering, attempted extortion, fraud and aiding bribery in an alleged multimillion dollar scheme shaking down companies seeking state contracts.

John McCain's dealings with lobbyists have properly come under a microscope; why not Mr. Obama's? Partly, says Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass, because the national media establishment has decided that Chicago's grubby politics interferes with the story line of hope they've set out for Mr. Obama. Former Washington Post reporter Tom Edsall, who now teaches journalism at Columbia University, told Canada's Globe & Mail that "reporters have sometimes allowed themselves to get too much caught up in [Obama] excitement." Then there are Chicago Republicans, loath to encourage the national party to pounce because some of their own leaders are caught in the Rezko mess.

For its part, the Democratic Party may once again nominate a first-time candidate they haven't fully vetted politically. Democrats flocked to Michael Dukakis in 1988, ignoring Al Gore's warnings about Willie Horton; later they were blindsided by revelations about Bill Clinton after he was elected president.

This year, Hillary Clinton made a clumsy attack on Mr. Rezko as a "slum landlord" during one debate. But her campaign has otherwise steered clear -- at least until last Friday, when Howard Wolfson, a top Clinton aide, suggested to reporters on a conference call that "the number of questions that we don't know the answers to about the relationship between Mr. Rezko and Mr. Obama is staggering." Mr. Obama's campaign told me they have answered all questions about Mr. Rezko and have no plans to release any further records.

More here

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Obama and the crooked Rezko

Rick Moran has a BIG article telling you almost anything you might want to know about the Rezko corruption case and Obama's involvement with Rezko. By all means read the full article but I think that all I need to do here is cut to Rick's summing up:

There is no evidence that in any of his dealings with Rezko that Obama broke any law. The question is one of ethics. And judgment, of course. And truthfulness. Obama's relationship with Rezko is much more extensive than he has ever admitted. Their 17-year relationship went beyond "one fundraiser" as Obama claims, and a few social dates with the gals.

Rezko was a patron, a valued supporter, and a business partner. And almost certainly a close friend as well.

The significance of this relationship is that it proves that Barack Obama is not who he claims to be - a new kind of politician who will lead us all to the Promised Land. Obama can lie like any normal politician. He can do favors for his supporters who give him money. He can do business with scam artists like Rezko whose illegal activities authorities are still trying to unravel.

Given what we know already, there doesn't seem to be a "bottom" to this story yet. And what we find when we get there may yet prove to be Barack Obama's undoing as a candidate for President of the United States.





Obama: A Thin Record For a Bridge Builder



Hillary Clinton has been trying to make a point about Barack Obama that deserves one last careful look before Tuesday's probably decisive Democratic primaries: If Obama truly intends to unite America across party lines and break the Washington logjam, then why has he shown so little interest or aptitude for the hard work of bipartisan government?

This is the real "where's the beef?" question about Obama, and it still doesn't have a good answer. He gives a great speech, and he promises that he can heal the terrible partisan divisions that have enfeebled American politics over the past decade. And this is a message of hope that the country clearly wants to hear.

But can he do it? The record is mixed, but it's fair to say that Obama has not shown much willingness to take risks or make enemies to try to restore a working center in Washington. Clinton, for all her reputation as a divisive figure, has a much stronger record of bipartisan achievement. And the likely Republican nominee, John McCain, has a better record still.

Obama's argument is that he can mobilize a new coalition that will embrace his proclamation that "yes, we can" break out of the straitjacket. But for voters to feel confident that he can achieve this transformation should he become president, they would need evidence that he has fought and won similar battles in the past. The record here, to put it mildly, is thin.

What I hear from politicians who have worked with Obama, both in Illinois state politics and here in Washington, gives me pause. They describe someone with an extraordinary ability to work across racial lines, but not someone who has earned any profiles in courage for standing up to special interests or divisive party activists. Indeed, the trait people remember best about Obama, in addition to his intellect, is his ambition.

Obama worked on some bipartisan issues, such as a state version of the earned-income tax credit, after he was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996. But he also gained a reputation for skipping tough votes. The most famous example was a key gun-control vote that he missed in December 1999 because he was vacationing in Hawaii. The Chicago Tribune blasted him and several other vote-skippers as "gutless." One Chicago pol says that "the myth developed that when there was a tough vote, he was gone."

Obama's brash self-confidence led him into his only big political blunder. Prodded by the Daley machine, he challenged Bobby Rush, an incumbent Democratic congressman and former Black Panther, in 2000. Rush pounded Obama by more than 2-1in the primary. "He was blinded by his ambition," Rush told The New York Times last year.

Obama has been running for president almost since he arrived in the U.S. Senate in 2005, so his Senate colleagues say it's hard to evaluate his record. But what stands out in his brief Senate career is his liberal voting record, not a history of fighting across party lines to get legislation passed. He wasn't part of the 2005 "Gang of 14" bipartisan coalition that sought to break the logjam on judicial nominations, but neither were Clinton or other prominent Democrats. He did support the bipartisan effort to get an immigration bill last year, winning a plaudit from McCain. But he didn't work closely with the White House, as did Sen. Edward Kennedy.

The Obama campaign sent me an eight-page summary of his "bipartisan accomplishments," and it includes some encouraging examples of working across the aisle on issues such as nuclear proliferation, energy, veterans affairs, budget earmarks and ethics reforms. So the cupboard isn't entirely bare. It's just that, unlike McCain, Obama bears no obvious political scars for fighting bipartisan battles that were unpopular with his party's base.

"The authentic Barack Obama? We just don't know. The level of uncertainty is too high," one Democratic senator told me last week. He noted that Obama hasn't been involved in any "transformative battles" where he might anger any of the party's interest groups. "If his voting record in the past is the real Barack Obama, then there isn't going to be any bipartisanship," this senator cautioned.

Voting for a candidate is always an act of faith -- a belief that the politician will win a mandate that allows him to transcend his own past limitations and those of his party. Ronald Reagan taught the country something about the ability of a world-class communicator to create such a new political space that defies the previous categories.

No one who has watched Obama's sweep toward the nomination would say it's impossible that he can be the great uniter. I just wish we had more evidence.

Source






Obama's NAFTA demagoguery

His campaign claims a million jobs have vanished because of the deal. That sounds devastating, but over the last 14 years, the American economy has added a net total of 25 million jobs -- some of them, incidentally, attributable to expanded trade with Mexico. When NAFTA took effect in 1994, the unemployment rate was 6.7 percent. Today it's 4.9 percent.

But maybe all the jobs we lost were good ones and all the new ones are minimum-wage positions sweeping out abandoned factories? Actually, no. According to data compiled by Harvard economist Robert Z. Lawrence, the average blue-collar worker's wages and benefits, adjusted for inflation, have risen by 11 percent under NAFTA. Instead of driving pay scales down, it appears to have pulled them up.

Manufacturing employment has declined, but not because we're producing less: Manufacturing output has not only expanded, but has expanded far faster than it did in the decade before NAFTA. The problem is that as productivity rises, we can make more stuff with fewer people. That's not a bad thing. In fact, it's essentially the definition of economic progress.

We're not the only country facing that phenomenon. China makes everything these days, right? But between 1995 and 2002, it lost 15 million manufacturing jobs.

Even if the candidates don't want to acknowledge the gains of the last 14 years, it's hard to see how they can blame NAFTA for economic troubles in Ohio or elsewhere. The whole idea was to eliminate import duties in both the United States and Mexico (as well as Canada). What everyone forgets is that we got the best of that bargain, since our tariffs were very low to begin with....

Critics complain that while exports to Mexico have risen, imports from Mexico have risen even faster. But that's not because we embraced free trade. It's because our economy has been more robust than theirs. Prosperous consumers buy more goods, from both home and abroad, than struggling consumers. Absent NAFTA, the trade imbalance with Mexico would not be smaller. It would be bigger....

I think one reason why Clinton has been falling behind is because she has not really challenged Obama's bogus remarks about issues like NAFTA, instead trying to imply that she is against it too. Obama is flunking econ 101 and Hillary is saying me too rather than pointing out just how wrong he is and how much her husband's trade policy has helped America.

Investor's Business Daily has more stats on the benefits of NAFTA trade. Why didn't Hillary say shame on you Barack Obama about the demagoguery instead of waffling on her earlier positions?

Source

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Is Obama Just A Failure With A Good Rap?

Post below lifted from Riehl World. See the original for links

It's funny how the media can shape our perceptions of anything as perhaps different from the reality of a situation. Spending some time trying to look more deeply into Barack Obama's background, one could come away wondering, what has he ever really accomplished in the real world, besides giving good speeches and running for office? When and where did he start community organizing, for instance? I've read he started in Harlem but can't find details on that. What there is, is this and this.

In the early 1980s, when Jerry Kellman interviewed a young, idealistic Ivy League graduate for a $10,000 a year job with Chicago's Developing Communities Project (DCP) he had no way of knowing it would be a meeting that would follow him for the rest of his life.

But Obama wasn't a "new" grad. I'd like to know more about these two seemingly lost years - years during which it would appear he failed at making money, frankly.

After graduating from Columbia University in 1983 with a major in political science, Obama worked as a financial consultant in New York City. But he was bored-and drawn to public service. In 1985, he moved to Chicago to work with local churches organizing job training and other programs for poor and working-class residents of Altgeld Gardens, a public housing project where 5,300 African-Americans tried to survive amid shuttered steel mills, a nearby landfill, a putrid sewage treatment plant, and a pervasive feeling that the white establishment of Chicago would never give them a fair shake.

It's relevant, as for all intent and purposes he seems to have failed as a community organizer - at least as far as bringing any real change. He left in frustration after only three years. I'm not trying to diminish whatever it is he has done. But aside from talking a lot and making people feel better about themselves, I'm just not sure what he has accomplished with any consistency in life beyond running for office.

Perhaps his most confrontational effort was to pressure city authorities to remove asbestos from the apartments in 1986. When the on-site manager didn't take action, Obama nudged the residents into confronting city housing officials in two angry public meetings downtown. These generated "a victory of sorts," Obama said later, as workers soon began sealing the asbestos in the buildings. But the project gradually ran out of steam and money. In fact, some tenants still have asbestos in their homes, according to current resident Linda Randle, 53, who worked with Obama in the '86 anti-asbestos campaign.

Faced with such frustrations, after three years in Chicago, Obama decided to apply his skills in the wider world. He entered Harvard Law School in 1988, became the first African-American president of Harvard Law Review in 1990, and earned his law degree in 1991. He returned to Chicago to work as a civil rights lawyer and teach at the University of Chicago Law School. He eventually won a seat in the Illinois State Senate and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

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Style beating substance in Democrat race



This week the US has its real and decisive Super Tuesday, when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama go head-to-head in the Democratic primaries in the huge states of Texas and Ohio. If Clinton wins big in both, she has an excellent chance of taking out her party's US presidential election nomination. If Obama wins either or both, which is much more likely, he will be almost impossible to stop. If Obama wins one of the two, he will have won 12 out of the past 13 contests in a row. It's difficult to imagine him losing from there.

The Democratic primary is a bizarre and complex process, with delegates to the eventual nominating convention awarded according to congressional districts and how big the Democratic turnout in those districts was in previous elections. There are also several hundred superdelegates - party heavies who don't have to get elected.

If Clinton wins Texas and Ohio, then the two Democrats will keep duking it out for weeks, if not months. But it's more likely that Obama will win at least one of the states and then either Clinton will drop out or Obama will keep winning and, even if he doesn't get enough delegates to clearly secure the nomination before the convention, it will be impossible for the superdelegates to go against the wishes of the majority of Democratic voters. Imagine how Hillary would look if the Democratic Party, virtually on a technicality, denied the presidential nomination to a black man who had won the votes. Yikes!

The Obama phenomenon is more or less completely unprecedented in national US politics. Perhaps its nearest equivalent is the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California. It is a triumph of celebrity politics. Nothing has been sadder than to watch Clinton railing against the creepy reverence with which the US media deals with Obama, and the astounding adulation he inspires across the land.

In truth, Clinton has little to complain about. Obama's candidacy is just a better, slicker version of her own - for Clinton herself is essentially a celebrity candidate. Obama is a first-term senator, Clinton is a second-term senator. Until she won her Senate seat in New York, which she won very much on the power of her husband's presidency, Hillary had never won any election in her adult life. Nor had she ever held any executive position, like being a state governor. Her real claim to fame was that she was Bill Clinton's wife. Of course, since she's been in the Senate she's worked hard to look and sound substantial. Obama, on the other hand, just looks and sounds pretty.

I rather fear we're seeing the infantilisation of American politics. It's common in the Philippines for movie stars and political leaders' wives, sons and daughters to run for president on the basis of their relationships. It hasn't really been common in America before. You might nominate Ronald Reagan as a movie star who became president. But he had had a coherent political philosophy for a long time and, much more importantly, was a two-term successful governor of the giant state of California before he became president. George W Bush undoubtedly got a huge boost from being a president's son. But he had been a two-term successful governor of another giant state, Texas, before he ran for president.

Obama is essentially the candidate for cuteness and glamour. His soaring rhetoric flies so high partly because it is so weightless. On foreign policy sometimes he talks like a super hawk -- even threatening once to bomb Pakistan to kill terrorists. At other times he is the most dove-ish left liberal. Clinton is right to say the media doesn't scrutinise Obama's positions in the way it does other candidates. If Obama doesn't win this time, or if he does, can a George Clooney or Oprah Winfrey candidacy be far behind?

Source

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Brief Excerpts

A Leftist grouch about Obama: "A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation that if elected Obama will not 'rule out' using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. The adviser also said that Obama does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new President will be sworn in. Obama's campaign says that instead he will focus on bringing accountability to these forces while increasing funding for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, the agency that employs Blackwater and other private security contractors."


Another Leftist grouch about Obama: "Hillary Clinton is right. She gets the first question more often than Obama, and usually the toughest ones. Then again, as everyone was very, very quick to point out after Tuesday's debate, she also jumps for it first when it's a toss-up. Of course they did the count right away. When it comes to Hillary Clinton, there's no doubt that, whether it's the first or second question, her response is likely to be subject to strict scrutiny, which, as we say in the law, tends to be strict in theory and fatal in fact, while her opponent gets judged by a sort of rational basis test that means if there's any conceivable version of what he's saying that makes sense, he gets a pass."


Vanderleun is thinking about what would happen if Obama were assassinated.


The NYT thinks Obama will have trouble winning the Jewish vote.


I have noted before that Obama has the quite crazy indifference to the truth that characterizes psychopaths. Here are another two examples of it.


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Video

An amusing singing video called "Obama loves me" here




From Brookes News

Barak Hussein Obama: The Lethal Delicacy: It's as if in the midst of the Vietnam war the US elected as its president a guy named John Paul Ho Chi Minh, educated in Hanoi, the son of a party member, who swore he had never been a Communist and became offended when anyone doubted it. Obama's candidacy is a calculated provocation, serving as a gauge to assess the depth of the acquired habit of politically correct self-censorship now infused in the minds of Americans willing to be thrown into the oven to avoid offending the cook


The Man Who Would Be President - Or the Manchurian Candidate?: Everyone seems to be caught up in the Obama cult craze. No one seems to have a clue as to the background of this man or his Muslim upbringing in schools where he was taught strict Shar'ia law until the age of twelve. He attended such schools in Jakarta under the guidance of his step father




Barack Obama Invents Barack Obama

Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995), is Barack's account of his discovery of himself in the midst of his discovery of his American and African heritages. "Discovery" is, however, a misleading term, autobiographically, factually, and interpretively. His racial identity and his racial heritages were not objective facts waiting for discovery, like continents hidden over the horizon waiting for explorers to bump into them or unknown planets and stars waiting for the astronomer's telescope to focus upon their coordinates in the sky. As Dreams From My Father implicitly shows, black identity and black African heritage were choices made by the young man; he could have chosen to be other.

How much did Barack Obama understand that he was inventing himself through decisions and actions? It is some of the charm and literary suspense in the autobiography not to know how self-conscious Barack was as he constructed his self-consciousness. Looking back at the events of which he writes, he brings considerable self-consciousness to understanding his journey, but this self-consciousness is subtly inflected with political self-awareness. The outcome of Barack's story, written before he entered politics, is his realization that he is a messianic savior, nearly in the religious sense, with a message and a mission.

Barack Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan student whom she met at the University of Hawaii, Barack Obama, Sr. Both parents had more important personal quests than maintaining a family and raising a child. Barack Sr. was given the opportunity to attend the School for Social Research in New York City on a full fellowship, which would have supported his family in that city, or Harvard University Graduate School, which offered only tuition, which would not pay to bring his family to Massachusetts. Barack Sr. chose Harvard, leaving his family behind. Ann divorced Barack Sr.

After obtaining his Ph.D. at Harvard, Barack Sr. returned to Kenya and pursued a career in government. After marrying several wives (in polygamy) and siring additional children, his public career collapsed. He turned to drink. In 1982, he died in an automobile accident, perhaps due to drunk driving. After he left his first marital family, Barack Sr. saw his son, Barack, Jr., only once, during a one-month visit when his son was ten years old.

Barack's mother, Ann married another foreign student in Hawaii, Lolo Soetoro, from Indonesia. Change in government in Indonesia required Lolo to return home. A year or so later, in 1967, Ann followed with Barack, Jr. in tow. They made their home outside Jakarta until he was ten. Lolo and Ann were unable to afford a private school in Indonesia. Barack attended public school (two years a Muslim school and two years a Catholic school), with supplemental home schooling from his mother. Concerned that he was not developing his potential, she sent him back to Hawaii after enrolling him in a private school in Honolulu. A year later, Ann left Lolo and also returned to Hawaii. He lived with her and his sister (by Lolo), until his mother returned to Indonesia to do field research for a Ph.D. in anthropology; then he lived with her parents until he graduated from the preparatory secondary school and went to Occidental College in 1979.

During his years of secondary school, Barack entered adolescence. His coming of age produced an identity crisis. Who and what was he? His mother had made the identification for him. He was black. While in Indonesia, she began a campaign of entreaty and education. The black people were noble. "To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear." (P. 51.) Prior to his mother's education, he had not observed that his father was black and his mother was white. "That my father looked nothing like the people around me--that he was black as pitch, my mother white as milk--barely registered in my mind." (P.10.)

There were several problems with his maternally imposed racial identity. First, when he returned to Hawaii, in Hawaii's multiracial and casual society, no one paid much attention to Barack. He was not identified as of any particular race. Second, he had no black parent for a model and guide. His father was not present. Though Barack had some exchange of correspondence with his father, it did not provide the clues he needed to grow up black.

In a word, as a result of his racial amorphousness, Barack felt inauthentic as a black man. The main theme of the autobiography is his effort to find authenticity as a black man. Barack discovers unresolvable conflict in every situation and relationship into which he moves from adolescence to adulthood, from school to career. In the end, he never finds authenticity as a black man. How he deals with this failure and resolves the conflicts in his life creates the Messianic political leader we see running for president this year.

At Occidental College and Columbia University, he gravitated toward other black students. He learned about black nationalism. He was particularly attracted to Malcolm X, though he did not become a member of the Nation of Islam. He became a reluctant radical--reluctant, because he was not sufficiently confident of his own identity to take a strong leadership role. He was continually torn between two worlds, the disadvantaged black community, to which he believed intellectually he should belong, and the white world of business, money, and power. He thought that, if he would be accepted in a black community, his black identity would be established; yet, he was pulled to the white world, because he was bright and academically successful. Schools and businesses called him out, as the nation embraced affirmative action. After college, he worked briefly in a large business corporation in New York City; then he became a community organizer in south Chicago.

The search for authenticity in the midst of conflicting choices led Obama to see the world, almost in a Platonic sense, as dual. There is the false world of shadows and the real world behind them. The shadow world includes black nationalism and black power. In college, radical black politics is simply so much play-acting that affects nothing real--is even amusing to those persons with real power. Out in the working world, trying to organize black communities to better themselves, he came to include mainstream politics, which he experiences in the Chicago mayoralty of Harold Washington, as play-acting. When black politicians get into power, they do not change anything fundamental about the distribution of power, capital, and opportunity. The lives of poor blacks, in the communities he tries to organize, are just as impoverished and desperate under a black mayor as under white mayors. Needless to say, Barack Obama was discouraged.

Unable to find his black identity in America, Barack traveled to Kenya, seeking to learn more about his deceased father and his black African heritage. Though he has met several of his half-siblings, it is only in Kenya that he encounters the full, sprawling, genealogical and family disorder that his father created through polygamy. He met his father's widows, several of whom are white. He meets many relatives. He meets his father's sister and one of his grandparents. From these relatives, he was able to construct a family narrative from his African grandfather's life in the British colony, through the second world war, to Barack Sr.'s colorful and dramatic life.

Though he enjoyed being in a black society, where his blackness was normal, his discovery of his family led only to further conflict. He discovered that in Kenya, black racial identity was less important than tribal identity. And he discovered that his family, so called, was an indefinite network of relatives.

"What is a family? Is it just a genetic chain, parents and offspring, people like me? Or is it a social construct, an economic unit, optimal for child rearing and divisions of labor? Or is it something else entirely: a store of shared memories, say? An ambit of love? A reach across the void?

I could list the various possibilities. But I'd never arrived at a definite answer, aware early on that, given my circumstances, such an effort was bound to fail. Instead, I drew a series of circles around myself, with borders that shifted as time passed and faces changed but that nevertheless offered the illusion of control. An inner circle, where love as constant and claims unquestioned. Then a second circle, a realm of negotiated love, commitments freely chosen. And then a circle for colleagues, acquaintances ... Until the circle finally widened to embrace a nation or race, or a particular moral course, and the commitments were no longer tied to a face or a name but were actually commitments I'd made to myself.

In Africa, this astronomy of mine almost immediately collapsed. For family seemed to be everywhere..." (Pp. 327-328.)

"If everyone was family, then no one is family.... I'd come to Kenya thinking that I could somehow force my many worlds into a single, harmonious whole. Instead, the divisions seemed only to have become more multiplied, popping up in the midst of even the simplest chores." (P. 347.)

Faced with failure to establish an authentic identity, unable to resolve successfully the contrary pulls of apparently conflicting worlds, several paths opened for Barack Obama to follow. One path he explored early in his youth--alcohol and drugs. He was able to pull himself off this path, apparently during college. Another path disclosed itself furtively and slowly. He could transcend the conflicting worlds as a political leader. On several occasions, he glimpsed himself as an inspired messianic leader. At Occidental, he helped organize a divestiture rally. He was a lead speaker. He took the stage in a "trancelike state". (P. 106.) He had prepared notes for his brief talk; but in talking, he connected with the audience. He felt his words take hold of them and draw him on. When, years later, he decides to take up community organizing, he thought of organizing as "redemption." (P. 135.) As an organizer, he found his voice to inspire, encourage, persuade, and empower the black community to take control of its destiny and work on its own betterment.

At the close of the autobiography, Obama reveals his discovery of the formula that would enable a people, a city, a nation, to overcome the divisions that split it. Many of the divisions were based in hate. The black community harbored a heritage of hatred toward whites. Blacks also wounded themselves with self-hatred. And the black community was divided between the middle-class black families who left the poor communities for better homes in better suburbs, and the poor blacks, who could not leave and lived, discouraged, under municipal regimes of both black and white. This hatred had to be transcended. Obama found the solution when he joined Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity Church on Ninety-fifth Street, Chicago. Reverend Wright preached a sermon on "The Audacity of Hope," that reached Barack. Everyone had to give themselves to someone larger than themselves, who would "put a floor on despair" and enable them to hope. Listening to Reverend Wright's sermon and then the choir sing of how Jesus had carried them so far, Obama finally established his black identity and found his emotional home. He was not raised a Christian--his mother was a secular humanist. Christianity was the final and necessary ingredient of his identity. Faith in hope would transcend despair and hate. Hope would enable everyone to rise above the polarities, contradictions, divisions, and conflicts of American society. Barack Obama had found his voice and his message. His mission awaited him.

Source. Further biographicasl commentary here


(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

Blade Endorses Obama

Post below lifted from Interested Participant. See the original for links

Although the newspaper reportedly seldom endorses candidates in primary elections, the Toledo Blade today endorsed Barack Obama.

The editors believe Obama offers "a breath of fresh air and new hope at a depressing time" and "America is badly in need of something new."

In my opinion, the endorsement insinuates several attributes to the Blade editorial staff. First of all, it indicates the newspaper's strong leftist bias. Secondly, it indicates that the editors have scant familiarity with the long-term results of socialist policies such as those advocated by Obama. And, lastly, the editors of the Blade wouldn't be able to identify a socialist if Karl Marx himself were resurrected, entered the newspaper's offices, and set all the wastebaskets on fire.

Prominent British black on Obama

One of Britain's most influential black figures today accused Barack Obama of cynically exploiting America's racial divide and gave warning that he could prolong, rather than heal the rift. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, claimed that the Democratic front-runner would ultimately disappoint the African-American community and dismissed the notion that he would be "the harbinger of a post-racial America" if he becomes the country's first black President.

Writing in Prospect, the monthly current affairs magazine, Mr Phillips suggested that guilt over transatlantic slavery was behind Mr Obama's support from middle class whites. "If Obama can succeed, then maybe they can imagine that [Martin Luther] King's post-racial nirvana has arrived. A vote for Obama is a pain-free negation of their own racism. So long as they don't have to live next door to him; Obama has yet to win convincingly in white districts adjacent to black communities," he wrote.

Mr Phillips compared Mr Obama to Bill Cosby and Oprah Winfrey, prominent black "bargainers" - those who strike a deal with white America not to make an issue of historical racism if their own race is not used against them. But, in a warning to the Democratic candidate, he added that Cosby now cut a "sad and lonely figure" because he had abandoned the moral weapon used by figures such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and Jesse Jackson in insisting that "in the end, salvation for blacks won't depend on the actions of whites."

"In truth, Obama may be helping to postpone the arrival of a post-racial America and I think he knows it," Mr Phillips wrote. "If he wins, the cynicism may be worth it to him and his party. In the end he is a politician and a very good one: his job is to win elections." He added: "If he fulfils the hopes of whites, he must disappoint blacks - and vice versa."

Mr Phillips said that there was no "British Obama" in part because the black British community was much smaller and therefore less likely to produce such high-achievers, and because "Black Britons can't bring centuries of white guilt to bear with the devastating impact that African-Americans have done for two generations".

The equality chief, a former Labour politician and broadcaster said he did not expect Mr Obama ultimately to win the Democratic nomination, although he conceded it was possible. However, if he did come to power, Mr Obama would not emulate JFK, he predicted, but Bill Clinton, with all the "charm, skill and ruthless cynicism" that entailed.

Mr Phillips is no stranger to controversy, having drawn criticism for past comments on multiculturalism in British society. Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, once said he was a prime candidate for the far right British National Party and his appointment to the CEHR was bitterly opposed by a number of black organisations.

Source

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Brief Excerpt

Obama is flush with funds -- now has over a million donors: "In an email to supporters trumpeting his success, Senator Obama said: "Think about that for a minute. One million people like you own a stake in a grassroots movement that is not just competing, but thriving, in a political process that's been dominated by special interests for far too long." ... for many voters in Ohio and Texas, the main exposure to the candidates will be in the ad breaks in The Biggest Loser. On that score Senator Obama is winning hands down. According to advertising consultants, he is outspending Senator Clinton by huge margins in both Texas and Ohio. Since the two candidates began advertising in the two states about February 12, Senator Obama has spent a bit more than $US7 million, while Senator Clinton has spent about $US4 million."



Posted by John Ray. For a daily survey of Australian politics, see AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and for a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM.