RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Barack Hussein Obama in '08?

The only comparison anyone was making between Chappaquiddick and a multiple murder was how foolish it was to argue that a dangerous crime isn't relevant to the present if it occurred when you (or Obama) were very young.

...in all honesty, this goes too far...You don't like Obama so you call him a muslim terrorist, you imply that because he is friends with some college proffessor (which is the person he met and got to know, not the young ayers who was in the underground) then he is a terrorist, you say because a man he's known 20 years gave a speech about race on a day Obama wasn't there that Obama hates America.
You attack whomod and me and any liberal for posting views you don't like. you try and turn them into jokes for the crime of being liberal. You don't do point by point debate to make your point, you attack the poster for daring to see things the way they do. And then when people call you on it, you just cherry pick the quoting so that you can make them seem irrational.

Judging by the way many Dems reacted here on the boards and on the talk shows today I believe McCain hit a Home Run with Palin. They are shitting themselves trying to figure out how to deal with this....

I'm posting with my shirt off

COLUMBIA, SC—In a nationally televised speech Friday, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama altered his vision of a unified America to exclude Dayton, OH loser Nate Walsh.

According to Obama, the 32-year-old Walsh, who has lived with his parents intermittently since receiving his associate's degree in 2001 and still does not have a credit card in his own name, no longer figures into the senator's long-term plan of rallying Americans from all walks of life around a common, higher purpose.

"People of South Carolina, people of the world, this is our time, this is our moment," Obama said before 72,000 supporters at the University of South Carolina's Williams-Brice Stadium. "That is, unless you live in apartment 3L at 1254 Holden St., you watched Money Train on TBS last night at 3 a.m., and your name is Nate

"I have always said that the change we seek will not come easy, that it will not come without its share of sacrifice and struggle," Obama continued. "And the last thing we need is dead weight like Nate Walsh adding another 20 or 30 years to the process."

The speech, entitled "A More Perfect Union Minus Nate Walsh," was 26 minutes long and contained the words "change" 12 times, "hope" 16 times, and "Nate," in conjunction with the phrase "with the exception of," 34 times.

Although Obama remained vague on issues such as health care and foreign policy, the Illinois senator was praised for finally publicly addressing the issue of Nate Walsh. Obama took a hard-line stance on Walsh, calling the part-time driving-range employee the lone aspect of America he doesn't believe in, a citizen who can languish in the past for all he cares, and "on top of everything else, kind of a jerk."

"When I began this campaign, my mission was to help this nation share my vision for one America—not a black America, or a white America, or a Latino or Asian America," Obama said. "But now what I see, what I envision, is a Nate-free America. And once we get rid of that guy, there is nothing we can't accomplish. Nothing we can't achieve."

According to campaign strategist David Axelrod, Walsh's failure to remember his mother's birthday five years in a row, along with the fact that for the entire month of July he washed his hair with a bar of soap because he was too lazy to purchase shampoo, are examples of the kind of hopelessness Obama is trying to avoid.

"I am reminded of an instance early last year when Nate told his sister, Elizabeth, that he was going to start going to the gym three times a week after work," Obama said. "I was rooting for Nate. I thought that this time things would be different. That this time Nate would be capable of change. But it was just like 1997, 1999, 2000, and 2002 all over again. He went to the gym twice and quit."

"What a loser," Obama added.

In the hours following the speech, members of the McCain camp scrambled to respond to Obama's views on Walsh. In a statement last night, McCain applauded Obama's position on the loser, but criticized him for not offering any real solutions to the Nate Walsh problem. McCain went on to promise that, if elected, he would rid the world of Walsh within his first 48 hours in office without raising taxes.

Perhaps the most stirring moment of Obama's speech came at its conclusion, when he reasserted his call for change on the part of everyone except Walsh, whom he urged to just change the channel to the Golden Girls marathon on Lifetime like he knows he wants to.

"People of America, not Nate, we have the ability to heal this nation," Obama said. "Yes we can, Nate excluded, seize our future. Yes we can, with the exception of Nate and his stupid cargo shorts that he never washes, turn the page to a new tomorrow. I am confident that where we—and by 'we' I mean everyone but Nate—are met with cynicism and doubt and fear and those who tell us that we can't, we—again, not Nate—will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of the American people in six simple words: Yes we can, except Nate Walsh."

Added Obama: "God bless the people of South Carolina, God bless America, and fuck you, Nate."

There was a fair bit of talk about Bill Clinton's speech Wednesday night to the Democratic convention, and Peggy Noonan even went so far as to declare that "The Master Has Arrived." But she is wrong. When it comes to political oratory, the master arrived last night at Invesco Field. Bill Clinton can give a glib speech, but there has always been something missing from his delivery. Try as he might--and he really did try--he was never able to convincingly fake sincerity. Barack Obama can fake sincerity, and that, more than the words of a speech or the pageantry that precedes it, is the key to his power as a speaker.

His speech last night was brilliant and perfect. It is too bad that the whole thing was a lie, which depended on the smoothness and apparent sincerity of Senator Obama's delivery to lull the listener into a state of credulity and prevent him from asking too many questions.

Here's an example that is small but revealing. Obama led with the best sales pitch he has to offer: that he is not George Bush. But of course, Obama is running against John McCain, not Bush. So he attempted to justify the substitution by claiming that "John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time." This statistic has been used throughout the Democratic convention, but it makes no sense. Bush is not a member of Congress and casts no votes there--so how can you compare his voting record to that of McCain?

But don't examine this folly; ask only what it accomplishes. It allows Obama to run against an unpopular president who will not defend himself because he is not actually in the race.

When it came to making the positive case for himself, Obama's first goal was to address the public's concerns about his background, particularly his patriotism and how much he identifies with American values. So he drew, not from his own biography, but from that of his family.

[I]n the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton's Army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.

In the face of that young student who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree; who once turned to food stamps but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships....

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle-management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman. She's the one who taught me about hard work....

I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine. These are my heroes. Theirs are the stories that shaped me.

In addition to identifying himself with the lower-income, blue-collar types who have so far refused to vote for him, Obama is also painting himself as someone with uncontroversial, traditional American values, someone who believes in fighting for your country and improving your life through hard work and perseverance.

This is supposed to make us forget that Barack Obama launched his political career under the spiritual guidance of a pastor who delivered far-left tirades calling on God to damn America--and he launched his first campaign under the patronage of a former domestic terrorist. Theirs are the stories that also shaped Barack Obama--but he wants to write Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers out of his biography.

Worse, he wants us to stop asking questions about this sort of thing.

These are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain. But what I will not do is suggest that the Senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

It's awfully generous of Obama to refrain from questioning the patriotism of a war hero. The real purpose of this statement, of course, is not to protect McCain but to protect Obama. Its purpose is to declare off-limits any further questions or discussion about his past association with Wright, Ayers, and all of the other shady characters from Obama's past.

On another area where he is particularly weak, foreign policy, Obama decided that the best defense is a strident offense. He projected a righteous self-confidence intended to make his viewers forget his opposition to the surge and his weak and stumbling response to the Russian invasion of Georgia. In this section, note again the gap between rhetoric and reality--and the willing suspension of critical thought that he requires of his listener.

For example, here is what he has to say on Afghanistan.

When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell--but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.

Obama criticizes McCain for allegedly going soft on al-Qaeda--it's a good thing he's not going to question anyone's patriotism--yet all Obama can offer is precisely the policies we are already pursuing: more money and troop for Afghanistan and one-at-a-time special forces strikes against al-Qaeda leaders "if we have them in our sights," which we have been doing for years. What Obama is presenting as a tough and visionary new policy is his support for the Bush administration's status quo. Does he really think that no one will notice?

His statement on Iraq is an even more brazen evasion. He boasts that "today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration,...John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war." But all of the current discussion about drawing down troops from Iraq is possible only because of the success of the surge--which John McCain advocated and Barack Obama opposed. He is presenting the success of a military buildup as vindication for a policy of military retreat.

Perhaps his worst line, however, is this one: "You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances." This is a reference to NATO--which has been conspicuously useless in the Georgian conflict, refusing even a symbolic resolution to suspend military cooperation with Russia. This statement is evidence that Obama is not even paying attention to world events. But he expects the viewer to be carried forward by the certainty and stridency of his tone. He asserts with an air of conviction, "don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country"--but he depends on the air of conviction, not any actual evidence, to sway the listener.

Addressing criticisms that he offers soaring rhetoric with no specifics, Obama replies "So let me spell out exactly what...'change' would mean if I am president." But what he presents is mostly a list of aspirations, such as "Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it." Or: "for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East." How is that to be achieved? Is it even possible to achieve it? Obama offers no answer.

Obama's list of specifics continues in this vein, promising everything to everyone in a way that would make the Clintons blush--but with such an earnest sincerity of delivery that it somehow doesn't seem like pandering.

In foreign policy, he promises the miraculous: "I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts. But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease." He's going to defeat terrorism with "partnerships"; face down Russian and Iranian aggression with diplomacy; and while he's at it, he will end poverty, disease, and changes in the weather. All of these promises are equally implausible.

As to domestic issues, here is what he promises on energy policy:

I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I'll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy--wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced.

Five million new jobs that pay well and can't ever be outsourced! He'll just snap his fingers and the laws of economics will bend to his will.

Oh yes, and he will "cut taxes for 95% of all working families," but he'll "pay for every dime." How? "I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less--because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy." Does anyone remember the Grace Commission in the 1980s or Al Gore's task force in the 1990s? Eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse" is a perennial promise made by politicians, but it will never produce significant results, because you can't pare down a $3 trillion federal budget by squeezing out dimes.

But the biggest contradiction papered over in Obama's speech is not about Obama's background, his record, or his policies. It is an ideological contradiction. The theme of his speech is "The American Promise." Here is how he defines it.

What is that promise? It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves--protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools and new roads and new science and technology....

That's the promise of America--the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation; the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper.

So we'll be free to run our own lives--except that we are also required to be our brothers' keepers. We will have a free market--except for the vast network of regulations needed to force businesses to live up to a long list of "responsibilities." We will take responsibility for solving our own problems--except those relating to roads, education, health care, water, toys, science, and so on and on.

In essence, Obama is declaring simultaneous loyalty to individualism and to collectivism, to independence and to dependence, to free markets and to state control.

If you wonder which half of this self-contradictory agenda will win out, Obama doesn't leave you in suspense. He criticizes McCain because "For over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy--give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else." The references to "two decades" and to "trickle-down economics"--a derogatory term for Ronald Reagan's pro-free-market policies--make his meaning clear. It is the free market that he wants us to regard as "discredited."

What he wants us to forget is what was actually discredited two decades ago by the collapse of the Soviet Union. What was discredited was socialism, not capitalism.

That is what makes this the most dangerous election in many years. It has been almost half a century since the left's ideas have had such an intelligent, charismatic, and appealing advocate. He is now preparing to lead the left's effort to reconstitute itself in the first serious way since the Fall of Communism. He must be defeated.

Obama's acceptance speech is likely to be effective, and we should expect him to have a solid "bounce" in the polls now that the convention is over. But there is a way to defeat Obama. His whole campaign is a beautifully presented illusion, and the way to defeat it is to keep hammering on the difference between illusion and reality. Because the more grandiose the illusion, the more thoroughly it will be rejected when it is revealed as a lie.

Barack Obama is an immensely talented man whose talents have been largely devoted to crafting, and chronicling, his own life. Not things. Not ideas. Not institutions. But himself.

Nothing wrong or even terribly odd about that, except that he is laying claim to the job of crafting the coming history of the United States. A leap of such audacity is odd. The air of unease at the Democratic convention this week was not just a result of the Clinton psychodrama. The deeper anxiety was that the party was nominating a man of many gifts but precious few accomplishments -- bearing even fewer witnesses.

When John Kerry was introduced at his convention four years ago, an honor guard of a dozen mates from his Vietnam days surrounded him on the podium attesting to his character and readiness to lead. Such personal testimonials are the norm. The roster of fellow soldiers or fellow senators who could from personal experience vouch for John McCain is rather long. At a less partisan date in the calendar, that roster might even include Democrats Russ Feingold and Edward Kennedy, with whom John McCain has worked to fashion important legislation.

Eerily missing at the Democratic convention this year were people of stature who were seriously involved at some point in Obama's life standing up to say: I know Barack Obama. I've been with Barack Obama. We've toiled/endured together. You can trust him. I do.

Hillary Clinton could have said something like that. She and Obama had, after all, engaged in a historic, utterly compelling contest for the nomination. During her convention speech, you kept waiting for her to offer just one line of testimony: I have come to know this man, to admire this man, to see his character, his courage, his wisdom, his judgment. Whatever. Anything.

Instead, nothing. She of course endorsed him. But the endorsement was entirely programmatic: We're all Democrats. He's a Democrat. He believes what you believe. So we must elect him -- I am currently unavailable -- to get Democratic things done. God bless America.

Clinton's withholding the "I've come to know this man" was vindictive and supremely self-serving -- but jarring, too, because you realize that if she didn't do it, no one else would. Not because of any inherent deficiency in Obama's character. But simply as a reflection of a young life with a biography remarkably thin by the standard of presidential candidates.

Who was there to speak about the real Barack Obama? His wife. She could tell you about Barack the father, the husband, the family man in a winning and perfectly sincere way. But that only takes you so far. It doesn't take you to the public man, the national leader.

Who is to testify to that? Hillary's husband on night three did aver that Obama is "ready to lead." However, he offered not a shred of evidence, let alone personal experience with Obama. And although he pulled it off charmingly, everyone knew that, having been suggesting precisely the opposite for months, he meant not a word of it.

Obama's vice presidential selection, Joe Biden, naturally advertised his patron's virtues, such as the fact that he had "reached across party lines to ... keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists." But securing loose nukes is as bipartisan as motherhood and as uncontroversial as apple pie. The measure was so minimal that it passed by voice vote and received near zero media coverage.

Thought experiment. Assume John McCain had retired from politics. Would he have testified to Obama's political courage in reaching across the aisle to work with him on ethics reform, a collaboration Obama boasted about in the Saddleback debate? "In fact," reports the Annenberg Political Fact Check, "the two worked together for barely a week, after which McCain accused Obama of 'partisan posturing'" -- and launched a volcanic missive charging him with double cross.

So where are the colleagues? The buddies? The political or spiritual soul mates? His most important spiritual adviser and mentor was Jeremiah Wright. But he's out. Then there's William Ayers, with whom he served on a board. He's out. Where are the others?

The oddity of this convention is that its central figure is the ultimate self-made man, a dazzling mysterious Gatsby. The palpable apprehension is that the anointed is a stranger -- a deeply engaging, elegant, brilliant stranger with whom the Democrats had a torrid affair. Having slowly woken up, they see the ring and wonder who exactly they married last night.

it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I've got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals.

But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.

Barack Obama’s post-Democratic National Convention bounce in the polls appears to be slightly smaller than the norm of past conventions, and it's gradually depreciating.

The Gallup daily tracking poll has found that since the conclusion of the convention, Obama has risen 4 percentage points in the polls, to lead McCain 49 percent to 43 percent today. That's a slightly smaller uptick in the polls than the 5- to 6-point bounce earned by a typical party nominee, by Gallup’s measure, since 1964. Obama and McCain were evenly split at 45 percentage points apiece prior to the Democratic convention, according to Gallup.

That outcome comes despite Obama’s speech before more than 80,000 people at Invesco Field in Denver on Thursday night, a political event that was also seen by about 40 million television viewers. It also comes as the Republican convention quietly got under way in St. Paul, and the national media gaze focuses southward to Hurricane Gustav.

Daily tracking polls by Gallup and Rasmussen Reports demonstrate that Obama has taken his greatest lead since July, if not the general election. But while Obama’s support remains significantly stronger than weeks ago, it appears that the post-convention bounce he earned may have already peaked.

On Saturday, Gallup reported Obama was ahead by 8 percentage points. By Monday, that lead had shrunk to 5 points. Rasmussen pegs Obama’s standing as relatively stable in recent days, with a 49 percent to 46 percent lead over McCain when “leaners” are included, a small but statistically insignificant improvement for McCain of 1 percentage point since Saturday.

CBS News reported Monday that Obama is now ahead in its poll, 48 to 40 percent, a 3-point uptick in Obama’s standing compared to its poll prior to the Democratic convention. Obama’s 3-point bounce exceeds that of John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 who did not rise in the polls following his convention. But Obama’s bounce is less than a third of what Al Gore received in 2000 and Bill Clinton received in 1992. Even Bob Dole, following the 1996 Republican convention, received a 4-point bounce in the polls, 1 point more than Obama.

But any Obama bounce, if it is sustained, could be said to be a victory for Democrats. In the days since Obama gave his address, the news cycles have been captured by the unveiling of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate, the opening of the Republican convention and the threat posed by Hurricane Gustav.

There have been only three previous back-to-back conventions, most recently in 1956. The effect of the GOP convention on the polls will not be known for days.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll and a Zogby Interactive flash poll, both completed over the weekend, have found the presidential race is in a dead heat. According to both polls, Obama attained no statistically significant convention bounce.

Whether Obama is ahead or tied with McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee will now come into the Republican convention with his best opportunity yet to break through his own ceiling and take a lead in the presidential race.

Jeez, Ralph Nader and Jesse Jackson should be supreme rulers of the planet by that logic....

stabbing a pregnant woman and her friends is different than pulling yourself out of a car crash and fleeing the scene through the dark night. at worst kennedy is guilty of DUI and negligence. and kennedy has paid for that by being rightfully locked out of the presidency. considering his family, that's a big thing. unless you're implying he knew she was still alive in an air pocket and purposefully left her there to die.
and what does Obama have to do with that car accident?
in all honesty, this goes too far. i was away for a few hours and coming back to this is just so ridiculous. you didn't even do the clever thing and find the many quotes about bush's DUI that i've made. instead you all chose to attack me and basically say I'm condoning murder. That I actually find offensive. But it's what you guys do. You don't like Obama so you call him a muslim terrorist, you imply that because he is friends with some college proffessor (which is the person he met and got to know, not the young ayers who was in the underground) then he is a terrorist, you say because a man he's known 20 years gave a speech about race on a day Obama wasn't there that Obama hates America.
You attack whomod and me and any liberal for posting views you don't like. you try and turn them into jokes for the crime of being liberal. You don't do point by point debate to make your point, you attack the poster for daring to see things the way they do. And then when people call you on it, you just cherry pick the quoting so that you can make them seem irrational.

i'm not giving him a free pass. i'm 26, i wasn't around then. for me this story is about 10 years old, because that's when i first looked into it.
i'm just arguing some of the facts, and now i apparently have to defend it because it's being compared to multiple murder. as i said, it's negligence and rightfully kept him from the presidency.