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Obama is a half-minority. Because when racial discrimination occurs people check your percentage of white lineage before deciding how much to discriminate against you.
Obama
It’s Kind of What We’ve Been Asking For….
Duncan made a good point the other day about Obama’s statement about the war:
The basic content of what Obama is saying, divorced from the larger debate, is fine, but as to how it plays in the current debate it’s not fine. It allows us to wait around one more Friedman… and then something will happen. Except it won’t happen. Troops will not start coming home 4-6 months from now. And, most likely, 4-6 months from now Obama won’t be saying “bring them home now,” though I’ve put him on my little calendar and will make sure to check back then and let you know.
The thing is that “bring them home now” doesn’t really mean now. It doesn’t mean that thousands of troops start boarding transport planes for the trip home. It just means that the focus shifts from staying to leaving, and the latter slowly begins to happen. Every time someone punts that action for yet another Friedman, it helps to ensure that the end of the war will always be a Friedman away.
I agreed with Duncan at the time even though I’m very sympathetic to what Obama is saying. Ultimately, Duncan was right though. Discussing Iraq in terms of how pony plans doesn’t work no matter how well intentioned and serious the idea. If George Bush believes all that is happening is that people are going to offer alternative plans he’ll keep sending troops to Iraq like a gambling addict chasing his losses.
The thing is, here’s Duncan today:
I suppose it’s progress that major Democrats are trying to one-up each other on legislation-about-Iraq-that-won’t pass. Still, now that they have a majority and seem to generally agree that ending the war is the right thing to do I’d prefer it if they got into a room and found something they could all get behind which would be an attempt to end this thing.
I do think Democrats (ones in office more than the 60s-scarred punditry) are at least understanding that this war is unpopular and there will be no backlash against them for attempts to end it.
Someone running for President and getting the message that there has to be a loud and unambiguous message to Bush that it’s time to get out, has to and should do exactly what Obama is doing. Yeah, it’s more symbolism than substance in one sense, but it turns the debate exactly as Duncan wanted to one of getting the fuck out. Obama and everyone besides Joe Biden will be able to still work together on mutually agreed upon plans after this, but the loud and clear call isn’t a bad thing.
So Obama’s doing what we wanted him to do and actually I think Duncan is doing exactly what he was previously annoyed with Obama doing which was to avoid the limelight and work with everyone on a plan in the Senate to get this over with. Duncan has good points in both cases, but I think we need to realize Obama’s statement is
a) a reflection of what he’s come to realize
and
b) exactly what Duncan (and I) were asking for essentially.
It’s the Only Way to Wake Bush Up
Obama Statement on Iraq
“Throughout the war in Iraq, we have been given assurance after assurance by our government only to find out that facts on the ground reflect a completely different reality.
“Last week, after being told by President Bush that his plan to escalate this war would be well-planned, well-coordinated, and well-supported by the Iraqi government, we find out in this week’s New York Times that none of this is true. Military officials tell us that there is no clear chain of command between Iraqis and U.S. commanders and no real indication that the Iraqis even want such a partnership.
“I cannot in good conscience support this plan. As I first said two months ago, we should not be sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, we should begin redeploying them to let the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever and to pressure the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to finally reach a political settlement.
“Escalation is a failed policy opposed by generals, Democrats and Republicans, and now even the Iraqis themselves, and the fact that the President is already moving ahead with this idea is a terrible consequence of the decision to give him the broad, open-ended authority to wage this war in 2002.
“It now falls on Congress to find a way to support our troops in the field while still preventing the President from multiplying his previous mistakes. That is why I not only favor capping the number U.S. troops in Iraq, but believe it’s imperative that we begin the phased redeployment I called for two months ago, and intend to introduce legislation that does just that.”
Scaife is Getting the Band Back Together
Expect to see the Illinois Project modeled on the Arkansas Project.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review takes a shot at “Obama’s Closet”
Interesting pattern: Only Barack’s middle name is used in the article. Huh….
More fun in this quote:
Said the senator later in an interview: “It was reflective of the struggles and confusion of a teenage boy.” Usually, when discussing drug use, politicians urge kids and their parents to “Just say no” to drugs. Barack Obama forgot to do so.
What about confessing to drug use? You talk about marijuana and cocaine.
Oh, look, you know, when I was a kid, I inhaled. Frequently. That was the point.
It was, wasn’t it?
You know, it’s, it’s not something I make light of. It’s something that I wrote actually about in my first book, and it was reflective of the struggles and confusion of a teen-age boy. And in that sense, I think, the vast majority of Americans understand that teen-age boys are frequently confused.
Sort of a different context there, isn’t it.
Kevin Bacon connections:
use drop cap here) Our story shifts to Baghdad. Ayham Alsammarae, an American of Iraqi descent who is a Cabinet member and Electricity minister, was jailed and waiting trial on corruption charges. But he escaped jail and claims to be out of Iraq. His whereabouts are unknown. He left with the assistance of “foreigners,” according to Iraqi police, who say an earlier escape attempt was assisted by two U.S. security contractors since departed from Iraq.
Alsammarae is a friend of Tony Rezko; the FBI is said to seek information on $2 billion in missing money meant to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure.
The connection to Alsammarae? None apparently other than knowing Rezko. And no mention that Alsammarae’s primary political ties are to Bush
And then claiming some nefarious connection to ACORN
But back in Chicago, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is more important than Iraq or Washington. ACORN and its associated Midwest Academy, both founded in the 1970s, continue to train and mobilize activists throughout the country, often using them to manipulate public opinion through “direct action.” It’s sometimes a code for illegal activities.
Prior to law school, Barack Obama worked as an organizer for their affiliates in New York and Chicago. He always has been an ACORN person — meeting and working with them to advance their causes. Through his membership on the board of the Woods Fund for Chicago and his friendship with Teresa Heinz Kerry, Obama has helped ensure that they remain funded well.
Since he graduated from law school, Obama’s work with ACORN and the Midwest Academy has ranged from training and fundraising, to legal representation and promoting their work.
What exactly it is that Obama was involved with in the case of ACORN that is illegal is never identified. ACORN has more than it’s share of problems, but it’s a bit bizarre to tie Obama to that.
In three of his five years he was director of the Developing Communities Project funded by the dastardly Catholic Churches in South Chicago. His primary connection to ACORN is through classes he has helped with…terrifying I tell you. The Gamaliel Foundation was another he worked with which is based on community organizing and is affiliated with….faith based organizing. Shocking. The Midwest Academy? An activist training organization. Oh, and the Woods Foundation and the Joyce Foundation are deep dark foundations trying to, you know, work and improve on inner cities and the such. How could it be.
It’s only going to get worse, but if you think this is nothing to worry about, remember what Scaife did to Clinton with $1.8 million. It doesn’t matter if anything is true, it only matters if these clowns can get it in print.
February 10th: Springfield, Be There or Be Square
I’m planning on making the trek–so should you so maybe Leo can work on getting a bus together for the Illinois Democratic Network…..
Illinois Political Pro Employment Act
It’s nothing like when millionaires run for something, but Obama will be keeping several local shops and people employed.
The Trib ran down some of the folks. Those most familiar to those on the blog:
Axelrod
Giangreco
Robert Gibbs
Plouffe
Bill Burton formerly of the DCCC
No word on Dan Shomon’s role–Shomon does public relations for many candidates and worked for Obama for a long time and is a favorite target in Cap Fax comments for apparently disgruntled people for no apparent reason.
And, of course, to make it bloggy, enter your favorite jokes about the crew (nothing really mean)
Most notable to me is that Gibbs and Giangreco both outbaby face me and I have a baby face.
TPM has a more exhaustive list:
* David Plouffe: likely campaign manager, senior strategist for Gephardt in ’04 and former executive director of the DCCC.
* Steve Hildebrand: accompanied Obama to Iowa and has been reaching out to potential staff behind the scenes, Daschle’s campaign manager in ’04 and Tim Johnson’s in ’02. Ran the Iowa caucuses for Gore in ’00.
* Robert Gibbs: communications director, a campaign veteran.
* Lou Susman: – will fundraise for Obama if he runs, Kerry’s national finance chair in ’04, formerly worked for Vilsack.
* David Axelrod: chief strategist and media consultant, formerly worked for Vilsack and Edwards.
* Paul Harstad: pollster, formerly worked for Vilsack.
* Matt Rodriguez: “friend” of the campaign who helped staff Obama in NH, political director of Gephardt’s ’04 pres campaign.
* Jim Demers: “friend” of the campaign, NH lawyer and strategist.
* Devorah Adler: likely research director, recent research director for the DNC.
* Shauna Daly: likely deputy director, recent deputy director for the DNC.
* Julianna Smoot: finance director, DSCC finance director in ’06 and Edwards’ finance director in ’04.
* Valerie Jarrett: part of inner circle, friend of Obama’s and a veteran of Chicago Democratic circles.
* Bill Burton: likely to join staff, press secretary for House Democrats’ midterm campaign.
* Paul Giangreco: direct mail, media consultant and veteran of Iowa caucuses.
* Larry Grisolano: direct mail, Giangreco’s West Coast partner.
I’m not sure which is worse–Giangreco being called Paul or being towards the end of the list
Hildebrand ran Gore’s 2000 campaign in Iowa which will still piss off most of the Bradley people, but oddly, Gibbs raises more anger over being close to the people who ran the negative Dean ad in Iowa on terrorism.
Vilsack would probably have a formidable team if Barack wasn’t running.
One of the best things is that the campaign team isn’t dominated by people from D.C. That’s a good thing since D.C. is a world unto itself.
Happily Eating Crow
Zorn is rubbing it in–he was right, I was wrong on Obama running for President. However, I’m in good company with the Senator himself.
Wanker of the Day
Tom Roeser could probably be the wanker of the decade as well, but today he is very special:
Ah, but one has the potential to do serious damage.
That’s the rumor, reported by Sweet that began with blogster Debbie Schlussel, a conservative talking-head on MSNBC, now carried widely by word of mouth by some political cognoscenti in Chicago bars. Right now the tale is in a decidedly phase 3 cyclonic stage as a key rumor in the bars. The rumor goes: While Barack Hussein Obama is affiliated with the Unitarian-like United Church of Christ in Chicago, he may have, at one time, been a Muslim-or at the very least was accepted as one in his early years: which, if verified, could truly be explosive and possibly disqualifying politically for the presidential nomination of a major political party in a nation at war with extreme elements of the religion. There has been no formal answer to that charge by the Obama people but the rumor gains currency.
First, his Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., killed in an automobile accident, was apparently a Muslim. No big stuff so far as it goes although it’s interesting to note that Hussein, given to both father and son, is a distinctively Muslim name-derived from that of Husayn ibn Ali [626-680], grandson of the prophet Muhammad. He was killed in the battle of Karbala in A. D. 680 and is a day of mourning and religious observance for Shi’a Muslims. Let’s say if you got a kid running around named Hussein, it means something.
Second, according to best-selling lawyer-novelist, Chicago native and fervent liberal Democrat, Scott Turow in the Internet publication “Salon,” young Obama went to a Muslim school for two years in Indonesia. Third, his mother, Anna, re-married an Indonesian man (most likely a Muslim as Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world).
Fourth, while Junior’s affinity is for Kenya which is largely Christian, it has a fast-growing Muslim population which has engaged in a good deal of religious violence and riots against Christians. Kenyan courts apply Sharia (or Muslim) law when the participants are Muslim. Fifth, in Junior’s book Dreams from My Father, after his father died in Nairobi in 1982, Obama was working in Chicago. He met his Kenyan sister, Auma, a linguist educated in Germany who was visiting in the United States. When she returned to Kenya in 11986 to teach for a year at the University of Nairobi, Obama finally made a trip to his father’s homeland. There he fully embraced the heritage and family he’d never known and came to terms with his father whom he had mistakenly believed was a foreign prince but who now realized was a human being burdened by his own illusions and vulnerabilities: this from his best-seller autobiography.
Schlussel puts it out this way: “Even if he identifies strongly as a Christian, and even if he despised the behavior of his father (as Obama said on “Oprah”), Obama is a man whom Muslims think is a Muslim and who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage.” She asks: Is this “a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where would his loyalties be?” She goes further: “Is [he] even the man we’d want to be a heartbeat away from the presidency if Hillary Clinton offers him the vice presidential candidacy on her ticket (which he certainly wouldn’t turn down)?
Or, put another way: A president thought to have been a Muslim as a child and who left the faith for Christianity is the last person to “heal”-which is Obama’s favorite word applied to foreign affairs. Even a third way: a president trying to disabuse a suspicious world that he’s soft on the Muslim religion may want to use replete examples to get tough. Finally a fourth: how would a president once viewed as a Muslim who became a backslider do in the concert of world politics?
Now there has been no substantiation or denial by the Obama people of the rumor that Ms. Schussel has put forward other than for Obama people to claim it is (a) racist, (b) vindictive and (c) full of suppositions. Very well, then let them answer it. Racist? It has nothing to do with Obama’s half caste black-white heritage. Vindictive? Not any more so than the theory put forward against John F. Kennedy, when he was the Democratic nominee in 1960. Full of suppositions? Sure: so the best way to clear the air is for Obama or his staff to give out all the facts.
Besides the level of bullshit that someone said it so it must be a big deal even though there is no evidence and it’s directly contradicted by Obama’s own account of his life, Roeser is too stupid to even get the attribution of the quote right.
Karl Frisch works for Media Matters of America, not the Senator.
IOW, despite claiming the Senator’s staff ducks the question, no one has asked the Senator’s staff because everyone in their right mind knows Debbie Schlussel and Tom Roeser are fucking batty.
Born Alive Veterans for Truth
It’s now a badge of honor to imitate a group of people who lied about a soldier’s war service. Dandy.
Stanek hits on the old nugget that Obama is for infanticide because he kept stopping an unconstitutional bill. The problem with this theory is that the pro-life movement was more interested in using the bill to beat up others instead of passing a bill that would pass Constitutional muster.
Essentially the bill didn’t include an exception for the health of the mother which is necessary for a bill to pass Constitutional muster. So instead of getting a bill with that exception, the pro-life movement insisted on passing a bill that was sure to go to the courts and get struck down. And if you opposed them? You were for infanticide.
The reality is a lot more murky with cases such as the following:
No one likes late term abortions. They are just necessary in some cases. The way to eliminate late term abortions not related to the health or life of the mother was to pass a bill that did just that. Insisting that health wasn’t a legitimate exception is what kept the bill from passing.
A Decent Kass Column
From over the Christmas break period.
Obama isn’t irritating. What’s irritating is the relentless media fawning and hype. Tom Bevan of the Real Clear Politics Web site recently predicted the slobbering will “drive John Kass nuts.”
It’s true. I have been driven nuts.
It’s as if writers are helplessly channeling the brilliant Obama/Daley media crisis manager David Axelrod, who is using secret powers to enter their minds from afar. Perhaps we should be issued cone-shaped aluminum foil hats–like those worn by the cute farm kids in the alien movie “Signs”–to keep our brains Axelrod-free while typing Obama stories.
I think Axelrod’s power is in his eyebrows. Sort of like when Samson lost his power from cutting his hair, if Axelrod trimmed the bushiness above his eyes, reporters would be so spellbound.
But more seriously, Kass brings up the test of whether Obama would reappoint Patrick Fitzgerald to be US Attorney for the Northern District. One thing to keep in mind is that while I’d love to see Fitzgerald stay around forever, he might actually want to move up the career ladder or get tired of Chicago. I think Kass has a good point, but there might be other reasons by 2009 that Fiztgerald might need to move on. That said, finding a similar replacement is critical and could probably be found amongst his Assistants.