5 posts tagged “obama”
Ahhhh, finally a Democrat who will not shirk from fighting with the republicans on national security issues! Not only that, but in Barack, we have someone who can simply and eloquently state the truth... and with that a devastating and damning argument...
Barack Obama continues hitting back hard today at the false McCain/GOP assaults on him for allegedly seeing terrorism as only a law-enforcement problem...
"I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let's talk about 9/11.
"The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors -- the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we'd be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.
"Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership -- the people who murdered 3000 Americans -- have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That's the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism."
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was taking questions at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin yesterday when he fielded a rather unexpected question about who he might have helping implement his Iraq policy.
A questioner asked if Obama would send George W. Bush to Iraq, as ambassador, after the president leaves office. Obama, who was sipping from a bottle of water, seemed to almost do a spit-take at the absurdity of the suggestion.
I'm trying to look past the Democratic primary to the general election. Now, there are some people who say that McCain wouldn't be that bad. I'm here to tell you that this is a gravely mistaken assumption. Here's one in a long list of reasons why McCain would be just as bad as Bush... Equal pay for women.
A Republican minority in the Senate has thwarted attempts to repair the damage done by a bare majority of the Supreme Court in Ledbetter, which determined that companies should be able to engage in pay discrimination without the threat of punitive damages as long as they're able to to keep employees in the dark about it for 180 days after it starts. John McCain, although he didn't show up to the vote, applauds the Senate's decision to help companies pay women unequal wages:
"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."
In other words, McCain favors women's rights...as long as they can't actually sue to enforce them. People who, affected by the bitterness of the primary, are tempted to think that the parties are indistinguishable may want to consider the votes in both the Senate and on the Supreme Court.
So McCain would like to support the retrograde republican-appointed Supreme Court which came to the tortured logic that the law regarding pay equity doesn't permit anyone to actually enforce it. The Ledbetter decision is so patently ridiculous, that I almost feel embarrassed for the Justices who signed on to it. It may be embarrassing, but sadly, it is not surprising. These jack-holes never saw a law limiting the ability of our corporate overlords to exploit us which they didn't like. With McCain, we'll get another generation of idiots like Alito, Scalia, and Thomas... and seemingly reasonable, but stealthily nasty corporate apologists like Roberts.
One thing I can promise is that with a President Obama (or Clinton), the next Justices will look nothing like that losers that Bush appointed...
I have not been posting much lately, mainly because I have been very busy... but a lot has been going politically on which has gotten me riled up, I just have not been able to blog about it. I'm just bursting to be able to discuss the injustice of the Bear Stearns/JP Morgan bailout, but I'll save that for another day.
However, for today, you might want to read this article about how there is essentially no chance for Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic presidential nomination. I've been reading shadows of this argument for a few weeks now, especially in reading through the lines in various NY Times articles... however nobody has really come right out and made the argument like I've seen it here.
One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.
Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.
Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.
People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.
But even some of Clinton’s own advisers now concede that she cannot win unless Obama is hit by a political meteor. Something that merely undermines him won't be enough. It would have to be some development that essentially disqualifies him.Simple number-crunching has shown the long odds against Clinton for some time.
But let’s assume a best-case scenario for Clinton, one where she wins every remaining contest with 60 percent of the vote (an unlikely outcome since she has hit that level in only three states so far — her home state of New York, Rhode Island and Arkansas).
Even then, she would still be behind Obama in delegates.
That means Clinton would need either some of those pledged delegates to switch their support — which technically they can do, though it would be unlikely — or for the white-dominated group of superdelegates to join forces with her to topple Obama.
To foster doubt about Obama, Clinton supporters are using a whisper and pressure campaign to make an 11th-hour argument to party insiders that he would be a weak candidate in November despite his superior standing at the moment.
“All she has left is the electability argument,” a Democratic official said. "It’s all wrapped around: Is there something that makes him ultimately unelectable?”
Her advisers say privately that the nominee will be clear by the end of June. At the same time, they recognize that the nominee probably is clear already.
What has to irk Clintons’ aides is that they felt she might finally have him on the ropes, bruised badly by the Wright fight and wobbly in polls. But the bell rang long ago in the minds of too many voters.
As we all know, we live in some pretty absurd times. The Bushies are pretty much nuts, and they just keep spiraling downward. These people just seem to have decided to just actively fuck up everything they can at this point. I just don't get it. I mean, I get it, these people are interested in short term gain for their supporters, everything else be damned... someone else will pick up the mess. But that said, I just don't get how anyone else goes along with this crap. It is pretty disturbing, that even now, there are still people who think what these clowns are doing is ok. Bush may have a 27% approval rating, but that still translates into like 75 million people who think he's just dandy. I don't get it.
On that tip, I just read this blog post, which is on that topic...
Tyrone: Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.
Tyrone: (shrugs) Probably right, then. Speaking of Obama, I need to get t-shirts printed up to sell.
John: I can do that on the web. What do they say?
Tyrone: Don't You Dare Kill Obama
John: How about Don't You Dare Kill Obama (... and we know you're thinking about it)
Tyrone: Niiiiice.
John: Or You Kill Obama and WE WILL BURN SHIT DOWN
Tyrone: Even better. Nobody wants their shit burned down.
John: Glad to help.
Tyrone: I'm having you taken off the list for when the revolution comes.
John: ... there's really a list --
Tyrone: Oh yeah. Hell yeah.
