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The Obama Nation
No American Should be Punished with a Baby
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“I’ve got two daughters, nine years old and six years old. I’m 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
March 29, 2008
Johnstown, PA
RedHatBlueHat 6: Fear Mongering
This week’s RedHatBlueHat consisted of the regular cast of Todd Crawford, Tim Jones, Shawn Collins, Mike Allen and Sam Harrelson. Mike joined the show live from Central Park but lost his connection about half an hour into the show.
With their normal candor and opinionated rhetoric, the cast launched into a rapid fire series of topics from the always strange world of politics. First up was a discussion of the increasing use of technology by politicians and their campaigns to get out the vote, raise money and stay in touch with constituents (and each other). The group also touched on Obama’s iPod selections and the politics of music selection. Surprisingly enough, the segment ended in agreement.
However, that was quickly shattered by the last two segments of the show which delved into the politics of fear and handpicked choice quotes from both the Red Hats and Blue Hats. While confrontational, the middle to end of the show does hit on important themes facing the nation this fall such as trust, racism, and the role of media.
The end of the show comes with a discussion of homeless veterans and what the next administration needs to do to improve the VA system which provides healthcare and social services to our returning service men and women.
The show runs a Texas oil rig sized 78 minutes.
When Did Obama Turn Against the War?
Barack Obama states his plan for ending the war in Iraq on his official site, from a speech he gave in Iowa on September 12, 2007
But is that a relatively new position (i.e. flip flop)?
I spoke out against what I called ‘a rash war’ in Iraq. I worried about, ‘an occupation of undetermined length, with undetermined costs, and undetermined consequences.’
However, back on April 5, 2004, Obama said…
“I’ve never said troops should be withdrawn. What I’ve said is that we have to be sure that we secure and execute the rebuilding and reconstruction process effectively and properly.
And I don’t think we should have an artificial deadline when to do that.“
Oh really now?
Barack Obama and Chris Dodd
I’ve got to wonder if Senator Chris Dodd is still being considered as a potential Vice-President pick by Barack Obama.
After all, Obama could pull his standard, “that’s not the guy I knew” line and excuse Senator Dodd and his sweetheart mortgage deals from Countrywide, a company whose practices he once called “abusive”?
If you’re not up to date on the story, Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got two loans at special rates from Countrywide in 2003 to refinance homes in Washington and East Haddam, CT.
The loans were reportedly part of a “V.I.P.” program, where certain lucky folks received preferential rates from the chairman and chief executive of Countrywide, Angelo Mozilo.
Yes, the same Countrywide that had ties to Former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, who served briefly on the committee to help pick a VP for Obama.
He was booted when his questionable connections to Countrywide were revealed.
Stay tuned to this one.
I Want My Obama TV
MTV has declined political advertising since inception in 1981, but they are changing course this year.
I guess they couldn’t resist the dollar signs in their eyes after Obama broke his financing pledge and is expected to raise somewhere in the neighborhood of a half a billion dollars.
MTV’s announcement of the switch follows a report in the New York Times on June 22 that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign wanted to do an MTV buy. It’s also probably not a coincidence that Mr. Obama, who is opting out of public funding, will likely have plenty of money to spend on youth-directed ads. A political expert said the most immediate beneficiary of the switch is the Obama campaign.
More at http://adage.com/campaigntrail/post?article_id=127973.
Don’t Tell Me Words Don’t Matter, Obama
Some highlights of Barack Obama, and the response from the media as he breaks his pledge to take public financing.
Obama Stops Playing Pretend
Barack Obama unveiled a new seal for his candidacy last Friday and it looked awfully similar to the official seal for the President of the United States.
Brian Rogers, a spokesman for John McCain, commented on the odd move by Obama, “This is too serious a contest about too serious of issues for a candidate to be playing make-believe on the trail.”
After a few days of laughs about Obama trying to play President with his little sign, his campaign decided to stop using the seal.
Yesterday, the seal was curiously missing from Obama’s lectern when he spoke to a group of women in Albuquerque on Monday.
NBC political director Chuck Todd summed it up best when he stated, “What a bizarre and dumb idea. It really feeds the arrogance narrative.”
Obama Rewrites U.S. Foreign Policy
Barack Obama is already blazing a trail with his foreign policy efforts, as he proclaimed, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
This was a blunder of multiple levels. As he promised U.S. support for Israel’s claims to all of Jerusalem, Obama not only offended the world’s 325 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims, but he also changed U.S. foreign policy of six decades.
In promising U.S. support of Israel’s claims to all of Jerusalem, Obama couldn’t have picked a better way to offend the world’s 325 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims. Israel’s 41-year stewardship of the Holy City has alarmed Muslims from Morocco to Malaysia. Upon seizing East Jerusalem in 1967, Israel razed the ancient Muslim Maghribi quarter to make room for Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall. Since 1991, Israel has steadily ratcheted down Palestinians’ access to Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Most West Bank Palestinians can no longer worship there.
Obama’s unnecessary promise deviates from nearly six decades of U.S. foreign policy that held Jerusalem to be occupied territory under international law. This long tradition was first broken in 2004 when President Bush acknowledged Israel’s demands to keep its illegal West Bank settlements in a final peace agreement, including those around Jerusalem. Thus Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer, would both scorn the international legal system’s foundational principle - the inadmissibility of territorial acquisition by war - and echo President Bush, whose failed Middle East policies he has rightly deplored.
More details at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/17/EDOQ11A1L3.DTL.
John McCain and 100 Years of War in Iraq
The Democrat machine and their 527 group surrogates has been perpetuation the myth that Senator McCain favors 100 more years of war in Iraq.
It makes for an impactful soundbite, but it’s not true.
Obama claims to want to run on a platform of change and taking the high road, but his campaign is doing just the opposite.
When confronted about the often repeated lie by Today show host Meredith Vieira, Obama exclaimed, “That’s just not accurate, Meredith. We can pull up the quotes on YouTube.”
Have a look at a couple of his “quotes on YouTube“:
“He (McCain) is willing to send our troops into another hundred years of war in Iraq.”
“We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another hundred years.”
Here is the full text of the exchange.
QUESTIONER: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years…
McCAIN: Maybe 100. We’ve been in South Korea… We’ve been in Japan for 60 years, we’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so. That’d be fine with me, as long as Americans… as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. It’s fine with me, I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.
Funny how Obama and company have omitted the “as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed” part.
Actually, that’s not funny. It’s sadly business as usual for the Obama campaign.
Barack Obama, Race Baiter
On Friday, June 20 at a Florida fund-raiser, Barack Obama proclaimed that Republicans will make the Presidential contest about race:
“The choice is clear. Most of all we can choose between hope and fear. It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy. We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”
I consider this demagoguery and race-baiting by a Presidential candidate to be appalling.
Now I understand that Obama hopes to be “Big Brother,” but I don’t think he has the ability to read minds.
Not to mention that racists probably wouldn’t vote for a qualified, accomplished African-American for President of the United States, so they certainly wouldn’t vote for him.
Such a campaign by Republicans, which only exists in Obama’s imagination, wouldn’t make sense. We saw that in his races against Hillary when he had extreme difficulty winning the big blue states.
It’s also ironic that Obama would assert that Republicans would run on fear, since it is a hallmark of the Democrats, such as their continued lies about social security.
This paranoid, mean spirited and divisive talk is offensive, and it serves to do nothing but drive a wedge in our country.
Obama - how about running on concrete plans and solutions, rather than the race card?
