Tag: Barack Obama (page 60)

Rep. Jim McGovern has a column up at HuffPo today quoting Barack Obama in earlier days on the War in Iraq.

Talking about how he would have voted on the '02 authorization, Mr. Russert flashed a quote from then-State Senator Obama on the screen that said: "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don't know." In response, Senator Obama said it was probably the wrong time for him to speak out on the war.

....Mr. Russert also reminded Senator Obama about this comment he made in July of 2004: "There's not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush's position at this stage."

The point being, Obama is criticizing Hillary for acting like George Bush, when in those early days, he came close to supporting Bush on the war.

McGovern says,

I'm not interested in who was "first" to oppose this awful war. I'm more interested in what's next.

When it comes to ending the war, the question needs to be: Which candidate has the experience, maturity, skill and ability to safely get our troops out of Iraq and bring this sad chapter in our history to an end?

There's no question Barack Obama is to be credited for his role in enacting legislation in Illinois to require mandatory taping of interrogations to reduce wrongful convictions.

But, he is not a death penalty opponent.

Obama wrote in his recent memoir that he thinks the death penalty "does little to deter crime." But he supports capital punishment in cases "so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment."

A Chicago Tribune profile of Obama last spring (May 2, 2007, available on Lexis.com) contained this paragraph:

A critic of the state's broken capital punishment system, Obama spent two years working with Republicans to broker a series of reforms aimed at making it more difficult for the innocent to face execution. Still, Obama found himself on various sides of the death penalty debate. Five months into office, he voted to expand the list of death-eligible crimes to include the brutal murder of a senior citizen or a disabled person. Four years later, he opposed adding murders that were part of "gang activity" to the list, saying the term was a "mechanism to target particular neighborhoods (and) particular individuals."(my emphasis)

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As long as we're criticizing Barack Obama today, check out the Daily Howler which takes him to task for his "new" strategy of being more aggressive in his campaign against Hillary.

First off, he's attacking her character, not just her position on issues. Bad move.

Worse, he's pretending she has not taken a stand on social security. That's false. She has taken her stand and her stand is, as it should be, There Is No Crisis.

It’s astounding to see a Major Dem pimping Social Security as a big, troubling issue. It’s astounding to see one Dem attacking another because she won’t go along with that plutocrat claim—especially when he’s been reciting the old chestnut about college kids. This claim has been the tool of plutocrats over the course of the past twenty-five years. Now, we see a Major Dem pimping this line—and criticizing Clinton’s troubling “character” because she won’t go there with him.

By the way, tell us again: Which of these two is the “liberal?”

Update: Obama and Hillary are now in an ad war over social security. Here's Hillary latest salvo, to run in Iowa and New Hampshire, detailing what she has done on behalf of seniors.

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Lynn Cheney told NBC's Norah O'Donnell today that Dick Cheney's geneology shows he and Barack Obama are 8th cousins, related through a relative from France in the 1700's.

Why was she telling this? She was "admitting" it to acknowledge any perceived bias on her part against Hillary.

On 5280.com today I wrote about Hillary's fund-raising success this quarter in Colorado.

Over at HuffPo, there's an article "Hollywood Still Hearts Obama" about how Obama is raking it in with Hollywood stars. Since I already had the link to the FEC stats, I went and checked.

Obama raised $3,724,772.18 in California this past quarter. Hillary raised $4,869,227.82.

How about Beverly Hills zip code 90210? Obama raised 69,102.81. Hillary raised 154,515.00.

The HuffPo article doesn't give totals, just lists some stars' donations but it gives the wrong impression. A better, not to mention more alliterative title would have been "Hollywood Hearts Hillary."

Barack Obama has an oped today criticizing Hillary Clinton for her vote for the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment which designated Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization.

Obama today also penned an op-ed in The Manchester Union-Leader warning that Congress -- including, notably, rival Hillary Clinton -- has given Bush the pretense to invade Iran by approving a recent Senate amendment. "When you give this president a blank check, you can't be surprised when he cashes it," Obama writes. "I strongly differ with Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was the only Democratic presidential candidate to support this reckless amendment."

But Obama didn't vote against the Amendment, which was a non-binding resolution. He didn't show for the vote. His supporter, Sen. Dick Durbin, voted for the Amendment also. (Roll call vote here.)

If Obama so strongly opposed the Amendment, why didn't he show up, argue against it and cast a "no" vote, instead of staying on the campaign trail?

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A few accurate and a great many inaccurate things have been said about Barack Obama's advovacy of a "new kind of politics."  Especially amongst the media, this has been treated as "why can't we all get along" vapidity, a bland notion that people shouldn't be mean to each other.

The truth is that what he is advocating is far more subversive and dangerous to the status quo.  

Insight into just how Obama intends to transform our politics and policy comes from Thomas S. (T.S.) Kuhn's seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

While there's been some discussion about his nukes stand in the speech today, what's significant is that Barack Obama directed his fire directly at Hillary Clinton today.  

In very stark terms.  Drawing contrasts.

And he's not taking just her on.  He's taking the entire way of thinking that she represents on.

Details below.

The 100,000 member International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers today endorsed Hillary Clinton for President.

Why? They say she has the best chance to win.

This is the fifth major labor union endorsement for Hillary. She leads the other candidates in overall union endorsements.

Obama got his first union endorsement today -- from a prison guards' union. Thanking the 9,000 member New York City's Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, Obama said:

"It's an honor to have the endorsement of these men and women who put themselves at risk everyday to serve on the front lines of our nation's criminal justice system." he said.

I'm talking to you, wingnuts, for caring more about a stupid newspaper ad (and yes it was stupid) than you do about the well-being of US soldiers.

I'm also talking to more than a few people in the progressive blogosphere.

Why?  

Because you're talking about the wrong vote today.

There was a vote today that was important and had direct relevance to ending the Iraq war.

But, if one paid attention to the blogosphere's self-interested whining, one would think that the big news was the Moveon vote.

The vote you SHOULD be talking about described below.

Sen. Barack Obama is unveiling a new plan for Iraq in Iowa today. Huffington Post has received an advance copy of his speech and posted excerpts.

This one is curious.

"Let me be clear: there is no military solution in Iraq, and there never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year - now. We should enter into talks with the Iraqi government to discuss the process of our drawdown. We must get out strategically and carefully, removing troops from secure areas first, and keeping troops in more volatile areas until later. But our drawdown should proceed at a steady pace of one or two brigades each month. If we start now, all of our combat brigades should be out of Iraq by the end of next year." (my emphasis.)

Didn't Obama, just two months ago , call for all troops to be out of Iraq by April 30, 2008?

“It’s time to set a hard date to signal a new mission in Iraq and to begin to bring our troops home. It’s time to ensure that we complete the change in mission and the drawdown of our forces, by the end of April 2008 – a date that is consistent with the date in my plan back in January.”

Why is he now extending that to the end of 2008?

Second, even if the generals do stand their ground, can someone explain how this makes sense? We're not fixing things now even with 168,000 troops, and if we draw down we're supposedly going to unleash a massive civil war. So what are 50,000 troops in scattered outposts going to do while that's going on? Hunker down? Head out and get slaughtered? Evacuate? I just don't see how this makes any sense at all.

As Mr. Drum asks, what are 50,000 American troops scattered around Iraq at various Forward Operating Bases going to do?