May 10, 2008 at 11:11 PM by David Pleasant
Oh yeah! Obama is getting ready to do a little business with John McCain. And that gas tax plan McCain initiated and Hillary plagiarized on? It appears he will get an opportunity to discuss it frequently.
Obama said McCain has received "a free pass" while he and Clinton have battled for months.
McCain, he said, "has a straight-talker image, but it’s not clear that lately he’s been following through on that image. I mean, this gas tax holiday was a pander. He didn’t even have a way of paying for it."
Obviously, Obama plans to capitalize on the stupidity of McCain’s proposals, like the gas tax and Bush’s tax cuts, he’s going to address McCain’s judgment with no statue of limitations imposed.
Barely mentioning Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama said he was open to campaigning with McCain in "town hall" events. But he also warned that controversial issues such as McCain’s ties to the Keating Five savings and loan scandal are fair game, and he called McCain’s proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoline tax a pander and a gimmick. . . .
Speaking with reporters in Bend, Ore., Obama brushed aside suggestions that the fall campaign may be largely about his race, liberalism or patriotism.
"In a contest between myself and John McCain," he said, "there is going to be a very clear choice on policy that I don’t think is going to have to do with ideology and who theoretically is more liberal or who’s more conservative. I think it is going to have to do with who has a plan to provide relief to people when it comes to their gas prices, who has a real plan to make sure that everybody has health insurance, who’s got a real plan to deal with college affordability.". . .
Obama was asked Saturday if the fall campaign might touch on the 1987 Keating Five scandal, in which the Senate Ethics Committee said McCain used "poor judgment" for allegedly pressing regulators to go easy on the owner of a failed Arizona savings and loan who was also a campaign contributor.
Obama said there is no doubt the Keating Five case is "germane to the presidency."
"I can’t quarrel with the American people wanting to know more about that," he said.
May 10, 2008 at 10:01 PM by David Pleasant
Hillary in Kentucky today:
"The only way we can have a Democrat in that White House come next January is to win in November, and we cannot win unless we can win 270 electoral votes," she said. "Look at the map, figure out where we’re going to get those votes, and which candidate is more likely to be able to win those votes in November against John McCain. I have taken on the Republicans before and I have won."
Uh…that would be a whopping two times Hillary.
For Barack Obama, that would be four times.
May 10, 2008 at 8:19 PM by David Pleasant
(Updated below)
The Los Angeles Times illustrates today how much the people of West Virginia oppose, to put it mildly, Barack Obama. Hatred of blacks existed in West Virginia long before Barack Obama came into the picture and no one could reasonably argue that many of these bigots would ever vote for any African-American running for president. And thanks to Hillary Clinton, the basis of the hatred has expanded. West Virginians now see Obama as a black elitist, Qur’an-swearing-Muslim, that is committed to taking their guns away.
West Virginians are not citing Obama’s policies as the reason they will not vote for Obama, but instead, they repeat what Clinton has repeated ad nauseam, directly and indirectly, through her campaign.
The concerns of party members…mirror those of many white Democrats nationwide: Some fear voters will be turned off by Obama’s black heritage. Others, they say, will find reason to doubt his patriotism or will perceive him to be an elitist. . . .
Neil Gillies, an Obama supporter who runs a local environmental nonprofit group, glumly recounted the gibes that his wife, a schoolteacher, hears regularly from her students. “They’re convinced [Obama] is a Muslim, a terrorist, a guy who’s coming to take away their guns,” Gillies said. “It’s just sad.”. . .
The [hand-painted yard sign with "Osama, Obama and Chelsea's Mama" on it] belongs to Eric Hardy, 38, a former Democrat who works at a woodworking plant. Now a die-hard Republican and president of the West Virginia Coon Hunters Assn., Hardy opposes any Democrat “who wants to go after my guns.”
Obama “takes the cake,” he said, “because of, you know, who he is.” He suspects Obama for his “Muslim name,” and comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., rankle him. “He’s just a mistake any way you look at him,” Hardy said.
But you say, “David, Hillary hasn’t called Obama a Muslim!” Indeed she has, indirectly and repeatedly, throughout her campaign. The Farrakhan remark in the last debate is just one example.
In fact, McClatchy presents a rather convincing case in a May 8 piece that the Hillary campaign participated in a January 2007 effort to nationally publicize a former CIA officer’s project to demonize Obama.
One [political amateur] in Virginia, who hates Obama like a dog hates cats, led a reporter through his efforts. Because the man is a retired clandestine CIA officer, identifying him could endanger officers or operations that remain classified, so McClatchy will not reveal his name.
In late 2006, convinced that an Obama presidency would be disastrous for America, he decided to start an anti-Obama operation. He combed the public record on Obama. He used a couple of allies and informants — half-jokingly dubbing his group “The Crusaders” — to learn about Obama’s background, especially his Africa connection and how he came to be the editor of the Harvard Law Review.
He assembled a dossier on Obama, including allegations that Obama attended a madrassa, or Islamic religious school, in his youth in Indonesia.
Then the retired spook tried to get Israeli intelligence officials interested in his Obama dossier. They weren’t, to his chagrin. He also shopped it to some foreign reporters. Again, no luck.
He wound up posting some of it on a blog — and where it went from there in the vast world of cyberspace is anybody’s guess.
But a few months after the man began his work, the allegation that Obama was educated in a madrassa appeared in an anonymous article in Insight Magazine, an online publication of the Unification Church, in January 2007. It also claimed that Clinton operatives had dug up the information. The article was cited by several conservative commentators, including on Fox News, before it was debunked.
The piece had the markings of what’s called a “false-flag” operation: Make a covert operation appear to be the work of another party. And, like many misinformation campaigns, it “takes what you might believe without any factual basis and seen circulating around …a lot of speculation spun into a story,” said Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA official.
Hillary’s done great things to ensure the future success of the Democratic Party.
On a side note, I wonder if the unidentified retired CIA agent is Larry Johnson — a well known and avid Hillary supporter.
Update 5/11, 11:21 AM: Larry Johnson left a comment saying that he had nothing to do with smearing Obama. I have to take him at his word, which seems to be limited to foul language and name calling that is not fit for public consumption. I removed his post and have banned him from the site.
Johnson’s participation here would be welcomed as long as it was civil, but apparently civil is a concept that eludes him.
May 10, 2008 at 2:26 AM by David Pleasant
Speaks for itself.
Click for graphic "How Clinton Lost the Lead"
By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: May 10, 2008
The trump card Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton held in her faltering bid for president — her support among the superdelegates who can control the fate of the Democratic nomination — began slipping from her grasp on Friday as Senator Barack Obama moved into the lead on this front, with uncommitted delegates declaring their allegiance to him as others deserted her.
Mrs. Clinton publicly vowed to fight on for the nomination while campaigning on Friday in Oregon. But a new, more conciliatory tone crept into her stump speeches, as she shied away from the more spirited attacks on Mr. Obama that characterized her recent primary battles, instead engaging him more gently on the issues while aiming her fire on Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.
The superdelegate movement toward Mr. Obama, of Illinois — giving him a net gain of six on Friday alone, with more expected — increased the pressure on Mrs. Clinton, of New York, to at least refrain from divisive remarks, particularly after her comments on Wednesday that lower-income white voters would not support Mr. Obama if he became the Democratic nominee. Aides now say she regrets the comments.
Democratic officials said what had been a trickle of superdelegates declaring for Mr. Obama was turning into a steady stream in the wake of Tuesday’s primaries, when Mrs. Clinton lost by 14 percentage points in North Carolina and narrowly won Indiana. Mr. Obama is just 166 delegates away from the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination.
