Tag: Barack Obama

McCain and His Fake Energy Plan

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Never Fear
[Never Fear! Fuelman is Here!]

Buried in an article about Obama’s call for releasing oil from the Strategic Oil Reserves is a succinct summary of McCain’s nonsensical energy plan.

Obama emphasized on Monday that using reserves is a temporary fix and that drilling is not “a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution.” McCain has said that drilling would have a “psychological” benefit for consumers; his proposal to suspend the 18-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax was ignored by lawmakers on Capitol Hill and criticized by economists, who said it would not lead to a noticeable change in prices.

On the stump, McCain talks frequently about electric power, a subject that energy experts say will do little to affect gas prices. His plan to build 45 nuclear power plants, which he will highlight with a visit to a Michigan plant Tuesday, would take decades.

[From Obama Urges Opening Up Oil Reserves – washingtonpost.com]

Gas costs update

gas price breakdown

Psychological benefit? Really? I’m not sure consumers would worry less about high gasoline prices knowing that oil corporations have the ability to drill for oil sometime in the future. And nuclear plants to be completed long after Senator McCain is deceased will help lower gas prices how exactly? Any specifics about where these plants are going to be located? In a convenient location that nobody would complain about, I’m sure. Show me these 45 new locations on a map, please.

(H/T a letter in Altercation by Ben Miller)
Gas At Last
[Gas At Last – Alaskan Service Station]

Running While Black

swanksalot0 comment

Welcome to the Dark Side

Welcome to the Dark Side


Bob Herbert is wise to the John McCain strategy – campaign not on ideas, but on insinuations and falsehoods. A typical Karl Rove disciple, in other words.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown

[From Bob Herbert- Running While Black – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com]

and

John McCain needs no evidence. His campaign is about trashing the opposition, Karl Rove-style. Not satisfied with calling his opponent’s patriotism into question, Mr. McCain added what amounted to a charge of treason, insisting that Senator Obama would actually prefer that the United States lose a war if that would mean that he — Senator Obama — would not have to lose an election.

Now, from the hapless but increasingly venomous McCain campaign, comes the slimy Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad. The two highly sexualized women (both notorious for displaying themselves to the paparazzi while not wearing underwear) are shown briefly and incongruously at the beginning of a commercial critical of Mr. Obama.

…

Both ads were foul, poisonous and emanated from the upper reaches of the Republican Party. (What a surprise.) Both were designed to exploit the hostility, anxiety and resentment of the many white Americans who are still freakishly hung up on the idea of black men rising above their station and becoming sexually involved with white women.

Of course, political campaigns are blood sports, nonetheless McCain is just slime of the worst Republican variety.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHXYsw_ZDXg

Creating Space to Think

Seth Anderson1 Comment

The Sunday NYT reprinted a brief off-the-mike conversation between Barack Obama and David Cameron, another one of those “didn’t realize the mike was live” moments. Though this snippet was actually interesting.

Mr. Obama: I have not. I am going to take a week in August. But I agree with you that somebody, somebody who had worked in the White House who — not Clinton himself, but somebody who had been close to the process — said that should we be successful, that actually the most important thing you need to do is to have big chunks of time during the day when all you’re doing is thinking. And the biggest mistake that a lot of these folks make is just feeling as if you have to be …

Mr. Cameron: These guys just chalk your diary up.

Mr. Obama: Right. … In 15 minute increments and …

Mr. Cameron: We call it the dentist waiting room. You have to scrap that because you’ve got to have time.

Mr. Obama: And, well, and you start making mistakes or you lose the big picture.

There is a tendency to fill up our days with as many activities, as many appointments, as many tasks as we can fit, and then even a few more beyond, to the detriment of our minds. I’ve always felt it was extremely important to have time to think, to daydream, to doodle, or to stare vacantly at walls. Bill Clinton (and Barack Obama) seem to agree.

Is Obama punishing The New Yorker?

Seth Anderson0 comment

I doubted the allegation that Ryan Lizza was barred from the Obama plane as soon as I heard it breathlessly reported as fact. Steve Chapman did one better, and asked the Obama campaign directly.

As a longtime member of the press, I’m always sensitive to any sign a politician is punishing journalists for doing their jobs. So my ears pricked up at the story that Barack Obama’s campaign had retaliated against The New Yorker magazine for its Obama-as-terrorist cover by excluding reporter Ryan Lizza from the press plane on the senator’s Middle East trip.

So I emailed Obama’s media people to ask for a list of journalists who are accompanying him. It turns out almost all the reporters are from TV networks or newspapers–those who cover him week in and week out. Only three magazines were represented: Time, Newsweek and Ebony.

Of the 200 journalists who applied, the campaign says it could take only 40. Among those denied were The Economist, the Boston Globe and the Financial Times. Some of the publications that were included, the campaign says, didn’t get as many seats as they requested.

I would be surprised if Lizza were barred as payback. In my numerous dealings with the Obama press people, they have always been cordial and helpful–even after their previous efforts were rewarded with a piece criticizing their boss on some issue or another. My Sunday column slammed him for his opposition to school vouchers. Yet on Monday morning, they responded quickly and helpfully to my inquiry.

[From Is Obama punishing The New Yorker?]

As Mr. Chapman points out, the Obama team let Maureen Dowd fly, and she has been one of the worst Obama snipers.

Squatters: Obama’s In-box

Seth Anderson0 comment

This cracks me up.

July 27, 2004, a friend invited Guru Raj to create a Google e-mail account. A recent graduate of the University of Virginia, Raj, then twenty-one, was watching the Democratic National Convention on a television in his parents’ basement, in Norcross, Georgia. The beta version of Gmail—available by invitation only—was less than four months old at the time, and largely unproved, but Raj’s U.V.A. e-mail account was set to expire in a few weeks, so he decided to give Gmail a try.

At first, Raj tried to create an address using his own name, but, remarkably, both gururaj@gmail.com and rajguru@gmail.com were already taken. So he tried the name of the young senator from Illinois who was giving the Democratic keynote address on TV. To his surprise, it worked, and, moments later, barackobama@gmail.com was quietly born. “I’m not some cute little Indian boy who grew up in America with political aspirations,” Raj, the first in his family to be born an American citizen, said recently. “I just thought it would be kind of funny to create an e-mail address based on a random senator whose name no one could spell.”

Over the next four years, as Gmail became the third most popular Webmail provider in the U.S. and Obama became a serious contender for the next President of the United States, Raj used the account for his personal e-mail. In the fall of 2006, he received, for the first time, a message intended for the Senator. By February, 2007, when Obama formally announced his candidacy, Raj was daily receiving dozens of misdirected notes from all over the world.

[Click to read more of Squatters: Obama’s In-box: The Talk of the Town: The New Yorker]

I’ll bet a lot of crazy stuff gets sent to that email address.

Topolobampo and Obama

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Topolobampo is excellent, I’ve eaten there a couple of times. Sepia? Not much of a fan, but then we weren’t exactly treated like royalty, or potential presidential candiates, when we dined there.

The Obamas’ favorite spot for a night out in Chicago is the alta cocina Mexican restaurant Topolobampo, according to Michelle Obama spokeswoman Katie McCormick Lelyveld. For a simpler bite, the Obamas turn to RJ Grunts, a cartoony Lincoln Park emporium of burgers, ribs and Tex-Mex standards, the spokeswoman says. On her own, Mrs. Obama has favored the more cutting-edge food at Sepia in the trendy West Loop neighborhood near the atelier of her suddenly famous dressmaker, Maria Pinto.

[From The Candidates Dine Out – WSJ.com
[Non-WSJ subscribers use this link]]

[snip] The WSJ’s Raymond Sokolov is a fan of Chicago dining:

Altogether more interesting on the Obamas’ dining list is Topolobampo, Rick Bayless’s superb little shrine to the full panoply of Mexico’s cuisine. We have eaten there happily for years, enjoying its authentic, even scholarly versions of classic dishes such as chilaquiles and Yucatecan roast pork. Topolobampo (named after a Mexican port) is one of the reasons we think Chicago is arguably America’s top eating city, with fewer high-end addresses than New York but a more stellar, dramatic pantheon.

From its diverse and creative menu, Topolobampo says, Sen. Obama often orders sopa azteca, a dark broth flavored with pasilla chilies, grilled chicken, avocado, Meadow Valley Farm handmade Jack cheese, thick cream and crisp tortilla strips.

Sepia, the potential first lady’s glam West Loop haunt (she ate there last Saturday), was new territory for us. We started out with one of the restaurant’s signature flatbreads, this one topped with applewood-smoked bacon, chunks of pear and crumbled blue cheese. We also sampled the ethereally smooth and densely flavored chilled carrot puree with chive cream swirled on its mirrory surface.

As a nostalgic Great Lakes native, we were thrilled to find Sepia offered walleyed pike, moist and fresh as the northern waters from which it came, dressed up with wild mushrooms and a cashew vinaigrette. Other fresh and naturally produced items on the menu included elite Berkshire pork and artisanal domestic cheeses. If Mrs. Obama has the chance to encourage this kind of food in the White House and can get Mr. Bayless to bring a Mexican touch to state dinners, the Obama administration would be a golden era for American gastronomy.

Barack Obama’s super marketing machine

swanksalot0 comment

No wonder Obama decided to ultimately support FISA and illegal surveillance of US citizens. You never know where database marketing will lead.

You know, of course, that Obama has your e-mail address. You may not have realized that he probably also has your phone number and knows where you’re registered to vote — including whether that’s a house or an apartment building, and whether you rent or own. He’s got a decent estimate of your household income and whether you opened a credit card recently. He knows how many kids you’re likely to have and what you do for a living. He knows what magazines and catalogs you get and whether you’re more apt to get your news from cable TV, the local newspaper or online. And he knows what time of day you tend to get around to plowing through your in box and responding to messages.

The 5 million people on Obama’s e-mail list are just the start of what political strategists say is one of the most sophisticated voter databases ever built. Using a combination of the information that supporters are volunteering, data the campaign is digging up on its own and powerful market research tools first developed for corporations, Obama’s staff has combined new online organizing with old-school methods of voter outreach to assemble a central database for hitting people with messages tailored as closely as possible to what they’re likely to want to hear. It’s an ambitious melding of corporate marketing and grassroots organizing that the Obama campaign sees as a key to winning this fall.

[From Salon.com News | Barack Obama’s super marketing machine]

It isn’t groundbreaking to compile such a database, but it is new in the political arena. Credit card companies, automobile manufacturers, and other corporations have been doing this sort of data mining for several years now, with the statistical models becoming increasingly sophisticated.1

Neither the campaign or its consultants would offer up many details about the operation; what they have is most likely a mix of hard data and predictions based on statistical models. Some very specific tidbits are available from consumer marketing firms; if you’ve ever registered a product — a TV, a computer or a microwave, for example — chances are the campaign knows you own it. Likewise, they know if you’ve signed up for the frequent customer club at your local Whole Foods, or if you’ve joined the American Civil Liberties Union. (Yes, those last two probably make you an Obama supporter). Or whether you own a gun and have a current hunting license. (An indicator you’re less likely to pull the lever for him in November.)

They can add that to what they know about the neighborhood in which you live — even about your specific block — then run all the information through a computer, and voilà: Obama aides can pull up a list of, say, married white men over 30 from an area where people buy a lot of gourmet potato chips and Miller High Life sells well.

For the most part, no one particular piece of information has an overwhelming Democratic or Republican tilt, though there are a few exceptions. For instance, people who live in “multi-unit dwellings” — apartment buildings — tend to be overwhelmingly Democrats, possibly because that one indicator tends to bring others along, like income, neighborhood density and living in a city

Footnotes:
  1. which is why I always give a few false answers to corporate seekers of data [↩]

Hillraisers Still Toxic

Seth Anderson1 Comment

There continues to be rumbling from certain high profile Hillary Clinton supporters that they would rather put a Republican in the White House (an anti-choice, anti-environment, pro-war Republican at that) than support the presumptive Democratic nominee. I haven’t decided if there are real delusions among the Hillraisers, or if this is a propaganda ploy promulgated by the McCain/Murdoch/Rove Axis of Evils, and given prominent space by the Wall Street Journal.

the effort involves dozens of the roughly 300 Clinton “Hillraisers,” individuals who raised at least $100,000 apiece for her campaign.

The Clinton holdouts are typically most angry about what they say was the media’s sexist treatment of Sen. Clinton during the campaign. And though few, if any, blame Sen. Obama directly, they fault the Illinois senator and other party leaders for what they say was failing to do enough to stop it.

Susie Tompkins Buell, a Hillraiser from San Francisco, said, “What really hurt women the most was to look back and see all this gender bias.” Ms. Buell said she hasn’t decided whether to vote for Sen. Obama and plans to skip the August Democratic convention.

[From Obama Faces Resistance From Top Supporters of Clinton – WSJ.com]

Why is Obama being blamed for the media coverage of the primaries? Don’t the Hillraisers realize the corporate media is Republican, by and large, and the national media is geared towards supporting their candidate, John McCain? The coverage was often sexist, sure, but it also was quite ridiculous towards the Obama campaign1.

The McCain campaign is pressing its case with former Clinton donors. Roughly two dozen big Clinton backers are looking to meet soon with Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive who is avidly supporting Sen. McCain. The idea, said one person familiar with the campaign’s plans, is to pluck disaffected independents, and especially women, from the ranks of former Clinton supporters. A similar meeting occurred last month in Ohio between Ms. Fiorina and Clinton supporters, the McCain campaign said.

The Democratic fissures come as evidence is mounting that Clinton supporters aren’t falling easily into the Obama camp. A poll released Friday by CNN and Opinion Research Corp. found that nearly a third of those who voted for Sen. Clinton in the primaries said they would stay home in November rather than vote for Sen. Obama. A similar poll taken by the two organizations in early June found only 22% expressing that sentiment. In the latest poll, only 54% of Clinton voters said they were planning to back Sen. Obama.

Really, there are stark differences between Obama and McCain. There are only minor policy differences between Obama’s platform and Clinton’s platform, why would any sane person make such a leap? Maybe this is a simply a Democratic version of Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos?

[Non-WSJ subscribers use this link to read the entire article)

Footnotes:
  1. Rev. Wright, fist bumps, yadda yadda. [↩]

Obama and FISA flip

Seth Anderson2 Comments

I was going to refrain from criticizing Obama for being a centrist, venal politician until after he was elected1, but the FISA travesty is just too disgusting. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for crying out loud, you’d think that would be enough of an education about nuance, but apparently not.

During the Democratic primary campaign, Mr. Obama vowed to fight such legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. But he has switched positions, and now supports a compromise hammered out between the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership. The bill is expected to come to a vote on the Senate floor next Tuesday. That decision, one of a number made by Mr. Obama in recent weeks intended to position him toward the political center as the general election campaign heats up, has brought him into serious conflict for the first time with liberal bloggers and commentators and his young supporters.

Many of them have seen the issue of granting immunity to the telecommunications companies as a test of principle in their opposition to Mr. Bush’s surveillance program.

“I don’t think there has been another instance where, in meaningful numbers, his supporters have opposed him like this,” said Glenn Greenwald, a Salon.com writer who opposes Mr. Obama’s new position. “For him to suddenly turn around and endorse this proposal is really a betrayal of what so many of his supporters believed he believed in.”

Jane Hamsher, a liberal blogger who also opposes immunity for the phone companies, said she had been flooded with messages from Obama supporters frustrated with his new stance.

“The opposition to Obama’s position among his supporters is very widespread,” said Ms. Hamsher, founder of the Web site firedoglake.com. “His promise to filibuster earlier in the year, and the decision to switch on that is seen as a real character problem. I know people who are really very big Obama supporters are very disillusioned.”

[From Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity – NYTimes.com]

Its About Judge Ment
[It’s About Judge Ment – Obama graffiti, West Loop ]

Does Obama’s caving in to the Bush administration mean I won’t vote for him in November? No, probably not, but I’m with Markos Moulitsas, aka Kos, on this2 – I just can’t muster much enthusiasm for Obama at the moment.

Markos Moulitsas, a liberal blogger and founder of the Daily Kos Web site, said he had decided to cut back on the amount of money he would contribute to the Obama campaign because of the FISA reversal.

“I will continue to support him,” Mr. Moulitsas said in an interview. “But I was going to write him a check, and I decided I would rather put that money with Democrats who will uphold the Constitution.”

Footnotes:
  1. all liberals probably realize that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama are very liberal, but we hoped that a Democrat could be elected, and our country would move ever so slightly to the left. [↩]
  2. for the first time in what seems like forever, but probably isn’t [↩]

McCain the Dick

Seth Anderson0 comment

Part the 3244th. Eric Martin notes the ridiculous John McCain voting against Jim Webb’s GI Bill for the 21st Century (or whatever the frack it was called), then turning around and claiming credit for passing it.

That temptation would lead one astray, however, as McCain shamelessly set about taking credit for the bill’s passage at a recent campaign event:

I’m happy to tell you that we probably agreed to an increase in educational benefits for our veterans that not only gives them an increase in their educational benefits, but if they stay in for a certain period of time than they can transfer those educational benefits to their spouses and or children. That’s a very important aspect I think of incentivizing people of staying in the military.

“We”? Stay classy John. And keep up the straight talk.

Suffice it to say, Obama voted in favor of the bill (and signed on early as a co-sponsor). Which makes this McCain cheap shot even cheaper:

Unlike Senator Obama, my admiration, respect and deep gratitude for America’s veterans is something more than a convenient campaign pledge. I think I have earned the right to make that claim.

Talk is cheap, and tuition is expensive. You earn that “right” by backing up your lofty rhetoric with actual votes. Otherwise, your advocacy is little more than a campaign expedient.

[From Obsidian Wings: Coopt the Vote]

Bob Herbert wrote about the surprisingly dickish John McCain, on May 6th, 2008:

Who wouldn’t support an effort to pay for college for G.I.’s who have willingly suited up and put their lives on the line, who in many cases have served multiple tours in combat zones and in some cases have been wounded?

We did it for those who served in World War II. Why not now?

Well, you might be surprised at who is not supporting this effort. The Bush administration opposes it, and so does Senator John McCain.

and

This is not exactly first-class treatment of the nation’s warriors.

The Bush administration opposes the new G.I. bill primarily on the grounds that it is too generous, would be difficult to administer and would adversely affect retention.

This is bogus. The estimated $2.5 billion to $4 billion annual cost of the Webb proposal is dwarfed by the hundreds of billions being spent on the wars we’re asking service members to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s important to keep in mind is that the money that goes to bolstering the education of returning veterans is an investment, in both the lives of the veterans themselves and the future of the nation.

The notion that expanding educational benefits will have a negative effect on retention seems silly. The Webb bill would cover tuition at a rate comparable to the highest tuition at a state school in the state in which the veteran would be enrolled. That kind of solid benefit would draw talented individuals into the military in large numbers.

Senator Webb, a former secretary of the Navy who specialized in manpower issues, said he has seen no evidence that G.I.’s would opt out of the service in significantly higher numbers because of such benefits.

Senator McCain’s office said on Monday that it was following the Pentagon’s lead on this matter, getting guidance from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Under pressure because of his unwillingness to support Senator Webb’s effort, Senator McCain introduced legislation with substantially fewer co-sponsors last week that expands some educational benefits for G.I.’s, but far less robustly than Senator Webb’s bill.

“It’s not even close to the Webb bill,” said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, an advocacy group.

Obama and Big Donors

Seth Anderson0 comment

Beer Money at the MCA

Actually, a sort of non-story if you ask me. Since Obama opted out of public financing for the general election (as opposed to John McCain who opted in to public financing when his finances were in disarray, then opted out when his finances improved, and is subsequently being investigated by the FEC for this apparently illegal act), Obama has to raise money from somewhere. Obama wants to win the election, not conduct a Nader-esque run solely on principles and garner zero electoral votes.

– A fund-raiser for Barack Obama here this week drew some of the cream of the entertainment industry, including recording artist Seal. He serenaded the crowd under crystal chandeliers at a downtown arts center just before the Democratic presidential contender took the stage.

But the headline of the evening was whispered by a campaign operative in the back of the room: The event raised more than $4 million from 700 guests who paid between $2,300 and $28,000 each to attend.

Sen. Obama’s disclosure last week that he will forgo public campaign financing — and the spending limits that go with it — appears to be turning his campaign from a reliance on small donors to a well-worn political fund-raising path: the quest for soft money.

This wasn’t the crowd of small donors that the Obama campaign often mentions to show the breadth of its common-man support. Instead, it was a crowd of big-money donors, many well-versed in federal campaign-finance laws that allowed them to give Sen. Obama more than 10 times the amount of money they normally are allowed to give a candidate.

Like his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, Sen. Obama has established a joint fund-raising committee with his national party. Such a committee allows him to co-sponsor fund-raising events in which donors can give as much as $28,000 — the limit they are allowed to give a national party — coupled with the standard $2,300 anyone can give an individual candidate running for federal office during a single campaign season.

The Los Angeles event Tuesday illustrated the twin perils Sen. Obama faces by opting to forgo $84.5 million in taxpayer money.

While he is exempt from the $1.2 million daily spending limit under campaign-finance laws, he must work for the money he raises, taking time away from the campaign trail. Sen. Obama also could open himself up to charges that he is beholden to big-money people and standard Washington interests.

[From Democrat Steps Up Push for Big Donors – WSJ.com]

Notice the subtle phrasing: “could open himself up to charges.” Who exactly is making these charges, other than Chris Cooper of the Wall Street Journal? The implication being Democrats won’t vote for Obama because of how his campaign is funded. I call bullshit. Again, Obama wants to win the presidential election, not run a holier-than-thou campaign eschewing the tools that would help ensure victory in some misguided attempt at purity. Also, how exactly is John McCain collecting his dollars? Holding a tin cup on K Street?

Maria Pinto and Michelle Obama

Seth Anderson4 Comments

Love Fashion

The West Loop – fashion capital of the Midwest! Not really, but worth noting anyway

CHICAGO — Election-year pundits have analyzed everything about Michelle Obama, from the size of her pearls to her newly hired chief of staff. But few have taken much note of the person responsible for one of her most formidable campaign tools: her wardrobe.

The designer behind much of Mrs. Obama’s public attire is an effusive 51-year-old Chicago native, Maria Pinto. A clothing resource to prominent local women including Oprah Winfrey, she was relatively unknown outside Chicago until 16 months ago, when Mrs. Obama began appearing on the campaign trail in Ms. Pinto’s streamlined pieces.

Ms. Pinto created the red silk-crepe dress and jacket Mrs. Obama wore on Super Tuesday and the white-cotton top and khakis she donned to stump with Caroline Kennedy. On June 3, Mrs. Obama sported a $900 Pinto-designed purple silk shift as she fist-bumped her husband before his Democratic primary victory speech in St. Paul, Minn.

The Obama buzz has helped lift Ms. Pinto’s brand. “It’s a huge compliment,” she says. Orders for her designs are up 35% over the past 12 months, and potential investors and employees are cold-calling, she says. Ms. Pinto and her staff of 18 will soon be vacating their modest industrial studio for larger quarters in Chicago’s West Loop, with a 2,200-square-foot boutique, Ms. Pinto’s first. The space is now being outfitted with bamboo floors and soaring, Italian-tiled columns for a July opening.

[From Fashion Campaign – WSJ.com]

I’ll have to pop over to the new boutique one of these days, and see what’s to be seen.

[Digg-enabled full access to article via this link, including several photos of Ms. Pinto’s fashion designs.]

Maria Pinto Coming Soon

Maria Pinto Permit

—

update, now the store is open.

Maria Pinto's boutique

Obama and 9-11

Seth Anderson0 comment

Steel, Ice and death

More like this please! From prepared remarks Obama delivered June 18th, 2008 on the topic of Detainees and Afghanistan.

I have made the same arguments as Republicans like Arlen Specter, countless Generals and national security experts, and the largely Republican-appointed Supreme Court of the United States of America – which is that we need not throw away 200 years of American jurisprudence while we fight terrorism. We do not need to choose between our most deeply held values, and keeping this nation safe. That’s a false choice, and I completely reject it.

Now in their attempt to distort my position, Senator McCain’s campaign has said I want to pursue a law enforcement approach to terrorism. This is demonstrably false, since I have laid out a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy that includes military force, intelligence operations, financial sanctions and diplomatic action. But the fact that I want to abide by the United States Constitution, they say, shows that I have a “pre-9/11 mindset.”

Well 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.

[From Obama Remarks on Detainees and Afghanistan – June 18, 2008]

McCain is most vulnerable to this attack: an attack on the 8 years of failed policies of the Bushites, especially as regards to terrorism. McCain will continue the same failed policies in the unlikely event he’s elected.

Click here to read the rest of the speech in its entirety.

Obama Rejects Public Financing

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Nickles Not Pickles

The internets are apparently good for something…

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama announced Thursday that he would become the first presidential candidate to forgo public financing of his general election campaign since the system was established three decades ago.

In a video emailed to supporters, he said that “it’s not an easy decision, especially because I support a robust system for public financing of elections.”

The move was widely expected, following the Illinois senator’s record-shattering fundraising during the nominating contest, and his proven ability to raise unprecedented sums from big donors and small Internet donors alike.

Sen. Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain, has been much less successful at raising money and the move sets up the likelihood of a big mismatch in money heading into the fall campaign. If Sen. McCain stays in the public financing system, as is expected, he would have about $80 million to spend between the Republican nominating convention in September and the Nov. 4 election. Sen. Obama is expected to be able to raise $200 million for that contest.

Sen. Obama said he felt compelled to make the move because “we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system.”

“John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs,” he said. “And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”

[From Obama Rejects Public Financing – WSJ.com]

McCain predictably is whining about Obama’s decision, because McCain’s fundraising has been so anemic in comparison to the Obama juggernaut. Don’t forget that McCain gamed the system in the primary, so any whining has to be put in context.

Do Angry Clinton Women Love McCain?

Seth Anderson0 comment

Frank Rich is positively giddy in his Sunday column1:

You’d never guess that Mr. McCain is a fierce foe of abortion rights or that he voted to terminate the federal family-planning program that provides breast-cancer screenings. You’d never know that his new campaign blogger, recruited from The Weekly Standard, had shown his genuine affection for Mrs. Clinton earlier this year by portraying her as a liar and whiner and by piling on with a locker-room jeer after she’d been called a monster. “Tell us something we don’t know,” he wrote.

But while the McCain campaign apparently believes that women are easy marks for its latent feminist cross-dressing, a reality check suggests that most women can instantly identify any man who’s hitting on them for selfish ends. New polls show Mr. Obama opening up a huge lead among female voters — beating Mr. McCain by 13 percentage points in the Gallup and Rasmussen polls and by 19 points in the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey.

How huge is a 13- to 19-percentage-point lead? John Kerry won women by only 3 points, Al Gore by 11.

The real question is how Mr. McCain and his press enablers could seriously assert that he will pick up disaffected female voters in the aftermath of the brutal Obama-Clinton nomination battle. Even among Democrats, Mr. Obama lost only the oldest female voters to Mrs. Clinton.

But as we know from our Groundhog Days of 2008, a fictional campaign narrative, once set in the concrete of Beltway bloviation, must be recited incessantly, especially on cable television, no matter what facts stand in the way. Only an earthquake — the Iowa results, for instance — could shatter such previously immutable story lines as the Clinton campaign’s invincibility and the innate hostility of white voters to a black candidate.

[Click here to read more of Frank Rich – Do Angry Clinton Women Love McCain? – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com]

If you ignore the chattering class in the Washington DC media (which you should for your own health anyway), and concentrate on the real numbers, McCain looks a lot like Bob Dole in 1996, or even Walter Mondale in 1984. That is to say, President Obama is looking good, CC.

One more snippet:

Yet the myth of Democratic disarray is so pervasive that when “NBC Nightly News” andThe Wall Street Journal presented their new poll results last week (Obama, 47 percent; McCain, 41 percent) they ignored their own survey’s findings to stick to the clichéd script. Both news organizations (and NBC’s sibling, MSNBC) dwelled darkly on Mr. Obama’s “problems with two key groups” (as NBC put it): white men, where he is behind 20 percentage points to Mr. McCain, and white suburban women, where he is behind 6 points.

Since that poll gives Mr. Obama not just a 19-point lead among all women but also a 7-point lead among white women, a 6-point deficit in one sliver of the female pie is hardly a heart-stopper. Nor is Mr. Obama’s showing among white men shocking news. No Democratic presidential candidate, including Bill Clinton, has won a majority of that declining demographic since 1964. Mr. Kerry lost white men by 25 points, and Mr. Gore did by 24 points (even as he won the popular vote).

“NBC Nightly News” was so focused on these supposedly devastating Obama shortfalls that there was no mention that the Democrat beat Mr. McCain (and outperformed Mr. Kerry) in every other group that had been in doubt: independents, Catholics, blue-collar workers and Hispanics. Indeed, the evidence that pro-Clinton Hispanics are flocking to Mr. McCain is as nonexistent as the evidence of a female stampede. Mr. Obama swamps Mr. McCain by 62 percent to 28 percent — a disastrous G.O.P. setback, given that President Bush took 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004, according to exit polls. No wonder the McCain campaign no longer lists its candidate’s home state of Arizona as safe this fall.

There are many ways that Mr. Obama can lose this election. But his 6-percentage-point lead in the Journal-NBC poll is higher than Mr. Bush’s biggest lead (4 points) over Mr. Kerry at any point in that same poll in 2004. So far, despite all the chatter to the contrary, Mr. Obama is not only holding on to Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic constituencies but expanding others (like African-Americans). The same cannot be said of Mr. McCain and the G.O.P. base.

That story is minimized or ignored in part because an unshakable McCain fan club lingers in some press quarters and in part because it’s an embarrassing refutation of the Democrats-in-meltdown narrative that so many have invested in. Understating the splintering of the Republican base also keeps hope alive for a tight race. As the Clinton-Obama marathon proved conclusively, a photo finish is essential to the dramatic and Nielsen imperatives of 24/7 television coverage.

Footnotes:
  1. in the New York Times. So glad they opened up the TimesSelect to everyone – saves me having to quote the whole damn thing. Though I got more site traffic [↩]