Tag: Barack Obama (page 61)

Last week I implored Barack Obama to step up on Iraq.

On Wednesday of this week, he will be doing just that.

Context and what to look for below the fold.

(Chicago Sun Times Photo)

I think the Chicago Tribune has the most details about yesterday's Oprah-Obama fundraising event.

In addition to the normal dishy details, it has extended quotes by both of them on their new relationship, on why Oprah is supporting Obama and what Obama thinks Oprah's support for him can do.

It's a three page article that is well worth a read.

The New York Times, in A Streetwise Veteran Schooled Young Obama, details Barack Obama's unsuccessful attempt in 1999 to challenge Bobby Rush, a popular incumbent congressman and former Black Panther from the South Side of Chicago. Obama was in upscale Hyde Park.

The episode revealed a lot about Senator Obama — now running for president, against the odds again and with a relatively slim résumé. It showed his impatience with the frustrations of his state Senate job; his outsize confidence; his fund-raising powers; his broad appeal; and his willingness to be what Abner J. Mikva, a former congressman and supporter, calls “a very apt student of his own mistakes.”

More...

Former Denver Mayor Federico Pena, who served in President Bill Clinton's cabinet as Transportation and Energy Secretary, has announced he will be a co-chair of Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

When asked about Obama's relative lack of experience, Pena didn't contend Obama was sufficiently experienced. Rather, he said, Obama has judgment and wisdom and those count for more than experience.

Pena's role:

He said one of his chief roles will be to help build Obama's Hispanic support.

[cross-posted at 5280.com]

Michelle Obama has an interview in Glamour magazine. Do we really need to know this?

In an interview with Glamour magazine, Michelle Obama reveals that her husband, Barack, is so “snore-y and stinky” when he wakes up in the morning that their daughters won’t crawl into bed with him.

Context:

Referring to their daughters, Mrs. Obama says: “We have this ritual in the morning. They come in my bed, and Dad isn’t there — because he’s too snore-y and stinky, they don’t want to ever get into bed with him. But we cuddle up and we talk about everything from what is a period to the big topic of when we get a dog: what kind?”

Mrs. Obama thinks these sorts of disclosures will prevent Obama from being deified and then knocked down. I think it's information I'd rather not know.

I'd also rather not wonder whether the comment means they sleep in separate beds ("my bed" -- "he's not there") -- some things should stay private and that's one of them.

Update: Glamour Magazine has "corrected" the quote from Mrs. Obama, adding the word "if", which eliminates the interpretation that they sleep in separate beds. See below:

An open letter to Senator Barack Obama from a supporter.  

Senator Obama, in your short time in the public eye you have shown great wisdom, judgment, and vision.  Your greatest strength is the ability to fuse pragmatism with idealism.  This often means eschewing traditional showboating and playing for the cameras in order to build consensus that builds towards progressive goals.

However, no single approach works for every problem, and building consensus is not working on the problem of Iraq.  There was a time for Congress to be the steering wheel of our Iraq policy.  Now, someone needs to slam on the brakes.

The Chicago Tribune has an interview with Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. It sounds like he's supporting Barack Obama:

If it's a national poll, Hillary Clinton will always run ahead of Barack Obama. Even though we [Illinoisans] know Barack personally, and his kids' names and everything, only 60 percent of Americans do. Now go to the states where they're working and you'll find that the polling is much closer between the two of them and Barack at this point is either tied or ahead in most of these states.

So I feel good about it. I would say at this point that he still has that magic. He is bringing the fortysomethings in as John Kennedy did in '60. It's not just the volunteers and the voters, but it's a lot of business people and community leaders who are in that age range [and] who think it's their turn. And that's good for us.

Just in case you thought Barack Obama was the candidate to knock some sense into White House and Congressional drug warriors, think again. Stop the Drug War quotes Obama's comments as printed in the New York Times:

If elected, Mr. Obama said he would establish a Drug Enforcement Agency office in New Orleans that would be dedicated to stopping drug gangs across the region.

New Orleans already has a DEA office. As Stop the Drug War says:

Obama's drug war revitalization plan for New Orleans is the latest step in his successful bid to be the worst on drug policy among the democratic presidential contenders. He's lamented the "political capital" required to repair the despicable crack/powder sentencing disparity, a no-brainer racial justice issue that even drug war hall-of-famer Joe Biden wants to fix. At Howard University's Democratic Debate on minority issues, he stood there like an idiot while every other candidate managed to address some type of criminal justice reform. He was also the last democratic candidate to pledge an end to federal medical marijuana raids, and not because they're heartless and evil, but because they're "not a good use of resources."

Interesting note on Barack Obama in a Washington Post article on his Chief of Staff Pete Rouse today:

It was the fall of 2005, and the celebrated young senator -- still new to Capitol Hill but aware of his prospects for higher office -- was thinking about voting to confirm John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice. Talking with his aides, the Illinois Democrat expressed admiration for Roberts's intellect. Besides, Obama said, if he were president he wouldn't want his judicial nominees opposed simply on ideological grounds.

And then Rouse, his chief of staff, spoke up. This was no Harvard moot-court exercise, he said. If Obama voted for Roberts, Rouse told him, people would remind him of that every time the Supreme Court issued another conservative ruling, something that could cripple a future presidential run. Obama took it in. And when the roll was called, he voted no.

Of course, other Democrats actually voted for Roberts, including Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold.

Sen. Barack Obama today named the Republican senators he'd work closely with as President. One of them is uber-conservative Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who Obama says "has become a friend of mine."

Via Democratic Underground:

Senator Coburn, who said that lesbianism is "so rampant in some of the schools...that they'll let only one girl go to the bathroom."

Senator Coburn, who claims he can tell if someone is telling the truth because of his medical training.

Dr. Coburn, who said: "You know, I immediately thought about silicone breast implants and the legal wrangling and the class-action suits off that. And I thought I would just share with you what science says today about silicone breast implants. If you have them, you're healthier than if you don't. That is what the ultimate science shows...In fact, there's no science that shows that silicone breast implants are detrimental and, in fact, they make you healthier."

Senator Coburn, who thought Schindler's List was smut, an "all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity.

More....

Derrick Z. Jackson's Boston Globe column today tracks Barack Obama's record on drug sentencing, including his stance on the disparate and racially discriminatory federal crack-powder cocaine sentencing ratios and the death penalty.

Shorter version: He used to be against the harsh crack cocaine penalties but now won't commit to doing anything to fix them. It may not be worth the "political capital" it would take.

On the death penalty, while he's voted against it in some cases, he's also voted to strengthen it in others.

Details below:

Barack Obama is speaking today at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. ABC reports in an attempt to "seem more muscular" on foreign policy, he is suggesting we withdraw troops from Iraq but redeploy forces into Afghanistan and Pakistan to hunt down terrorists. From speech excerpts:

There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

What's this all about?

[It seems to be] an attempt by Obama to ramp up his campaign to the next phase, where he hopes to seem not only a youthful idealist, but a president who would pursue a muscular foreign policy and protect the United States from terrorist attack.

....In many ways, the speech is counterintuitive; Obama, one of the more liberal candidates in the race, is proposing a geopolitical posture that is more aggressive than that of President Bush.

It could be just me, but I'm not in favor of sending our troops in Iraq anywhere but home to the U.S.

More from Obama's speech: