Michelle Obama Slams Hillary Rodham-Rodham: ‘If you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House.’

Michelle gets stronger all the time
‘I don’t want my girls to live in a country based on fear’
August 21, 2007

Chicago Sun Times
Barack Obama often says that his wife, Michelle, is smarter than he is, stronger than he is, and gives better speeches than he does.
On a trip to Iowa last week, Michelle was a firebrand, expressing a determined passion for her husband’s campaign, talking straight from the heart with eloquence and intelligence.
She told an audience in Council Bluffs that Obama was cautioned not to enter the race for president because there was so much fear: “fear that he might lose; fear that he might get hurt; fear that this might get ugly; fear that this might hurt our family.”
But the family decided to say “yes” to the Democratic race partially to confront those fears, said Michelle. “I am tired of being afraid . . . I don’t want my girls to live in a country that is based on fear.”
Barack Obama and his daughter Sasha play a carnival game with his wife Michelle and thier other daughter Malia, right, at the Iowa State Fair. (AP)
At another stop, in Atlantic, Michelle said she travels with her husband in part “to model what it means to have family values,” adding “if you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House.” She didn’t elaborate, but it could be interpreted as a swipe at the Clintons.
No longer is Michelle Obama’s rhetoric filled with funny asides about her husband’s penchant to drop his socks around the house or his disastrous attempts at housekeeping — she got criticized for that, unfortunately.
But as the campaign has moved along, her speeches have become stronger, funnier and more personable. She speaks with more emotion than her husband; you feel she is the power propelling him, that she has the psychological mettle, the tough skin, the searing ambition.
My colleague Mary Mitchell asked Michelle how she was able to “snag Barack.” But Obama knows he is the lucky one. At least he should know. Michelle is an incredible asset to his campaign.
• • • •
Barack Obama has spoken in many venues — high school gymnasiums, college basketball courts, union halls — but none has been as unusual as the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, where he talked to a group of Iowa Democrats last week.
The Surf Ballroom is the scene of the last concert played by rock ‘n’ roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson just hours before they were killed in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959.
And it is a place frozen in time with wooden booths, a linoleum floor and murals of palm trees and beaches.
Obama didn’t mention the ’50s rockers in his speech, but earlier this summer former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee came here and made a video commemorating Holly, Valens and The Big Bopper. It can be seen on YouTube.
The Surf was a cultural draw for both adults and teens from the 1930s through the 1960s. There was a jukebox and a maple wood dance floor for teens who would flock there after high school to eat Surf burgers and drink Orange Crush. Entertainers such as Duke Ellington came to the Surf to play for the grown-ups.
The walls are filled with photos of Holly and include many of his gold albums.
The piano once used by Ellington has been preserved. The Pepsi machine used by Waylon Jennings (who played in Holly’s band and gave up his seat on the plane to the Big Bopper) remains in the kitchen. The phone Holly used to call his wife, Maria Elena, in New York is still there, and so are the sinks in the green room Holly used before making his appearance on stage.
“That’ll be the day” anything changes in this cultural mecca still cherished by Iowans and others who revere Buddy Holly.

Enough’s Enough: Obama Will Limit Forum/Debate Participation

Enough’s Enough: Obama Will Limit Forum/Debate Participation
18 Aug 2007 10:52 am
Frustrated with the volume of interest group forums and non-party sponsored debates, Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign manager has put his foot down: Obama won’t attend any more debates that aren’t sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee, and he won’t accept any more invitations to speak at candidate forums.
In a memo the campaign will post on its website shortly, campaign manager David Plouffe writes that Obama has already spoken at 19 different candidate forums and has participated in seven full debates and is committed to attending a total of fifteen debates.
“Unfortunately, we simply cannot run the kind of campaign we want and need to, engaging with voters in the early states and February 5, if our schedule is dictated by dozens of forums and debates,” Plouffe writes. “Ultimately, the one group left out of the current schedule is the voters and they are the ones who ask the toughest questions and most deserve to have those questions answered face to face.”
Each forum requires the campaign to carve out hours of preparation time and yield its control over the schedule. Candidates refuse forum invitations at their peril, and Obama risks alienating some of his party’s more potent interest groups, going forward.
In his memo, Plouffe acknowledges as much.
Many friends and terrific organizations are sponsoring or planning to sponsor debates and forums. So this is not an easy decision for us to execute. But it simply won’t work to navigate this one by one. We felt we needed to make our approach clear and consistent.
About Obama’s decision today, there may well be some political charges lobbed by opponents, but it’s true enough that Plouffe, Obama and Obama’s chief stategist, David Axelrod, have been itching to announce this decision for a month or so. Plouffe makes sure to mention that Obama “was scored the clear winner by undecided voters in South Carolina and New Hampshire,” a sentence that innoculates Obama from charges that he is afraid to debate or peforms poorly in them.
Plouffe’s full memo is after the jump.
THE PLOUFFE MEMO
As we head into the fall, the campaign is entering a new more engaged phase that will give voters an even greater sense of Barack’s message of change and require the campaign to make decisions that balance the important role of debates and maximize time to run the kind of campaign we need to.
We have just been thru a period of three debates/forums in six days and the outlook for the future holds more of the same. And, because of likely calendar movement, once we get past Labor Day the Iowa caucuses are less than 120 days away.
So far, Barack has attended seven Democratic debates and nineteen candidate forums. There are five remaining sanctioned DNC debates, which we are committed to attend and two Iowa debates normally held in January, which are being held in December, which we are also committed to attend. We will also be attending the Univision debate in Florida on September 9. This means that by the end of this year, Obama will have participated in a total of 15 Democratic debates.
The debates have been important moments for our campaign, demonstrating clearly that Barack Obama is the candidate who will bring about the greatest change to our broken politics. Looking at the first sanctioned DNC debate in South Carolina, Obama was scored the clear winner by undecided voters in South Carolina and New Hampshire.
Unfortunately, we simply cannot run the kind of campaign we want and need to, engaging with voters in the early states and February 5, if our schedule is dictated by dozens of forums and debates. Ultimately, the one group left out of the current schedule is the voters and they are the ones who ask the toughest questions and most deserve to have those questions answered face to face.
Therefore, after this week, we will only be attending the five DNC debates through the sanctioning period of December 10, Univision, and the two Iowa debates previously mentioned. Candidate forums – where candidates appear sequentially will be considered, but we are unlikely to accept many of these. Instead, Barack will spend his time answering questions directly from voters in places like Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, and elsewhere. We simply cannot continue to hopscotch from forum to forum and run a campaign true to the bottom up movement for change that propelled Barack into this race.
After the sanctioning period, there will undoubtedly be a large number of debates scheduled in the early states and in February 5 states. We will make decisions on those as we get closer, but will clearly be doing a healthy number of debates after the sanctioning period.
Many friends and terrific organizations are sponsoring or planning to sponsor debates and forums. So this is not an easy decision for us to execute. But it simply won’t work to navigate this one by one. We felt we needed to make our approach clear and consistent.
I think this approach will be better for the voters and the campaign.
David

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/08/enoughs_enough_obama_will_limi_1.php

Obama’s comments on Afghanistan draw sharp rebuke from Romney campaign

Obama’s comments on Afghanistan draw sharp rebuke from Romney campaign
Bill Sammon, The Examiner

2007-08-14 20:51:00.0
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama came under fire Tuesday for saying that U.S. troops in Afghanistan are “just air-raiding villages and killing civilians.” The junior senator from Illinois made the comment Monday at a campaign stop in Nashua, New Hampshire.
“We’ve got to get the job done there,” he said of Afghanistan. “And that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there.”
The comment drew a rebuke Tuesday from the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
“That is a very troubling remark on so many levels,” said Romney spokesman Kevin Madden. “Most importantly, it’s emblematic of Senator Obama’s lack of experience for the job of commander-in-chief. But it’s also an entirely inaccurate condemnation of the efforts of the men and women of the United States military who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
A spokesman for Obama, who will speak at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Missouri next week, did not immediately respond to Madden’s criticism.
The flap comes three weeks after Obama promised that if elected president, he would meet without pre-conditions with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. That pledge was called “irresponsible and frankly naive” by rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Eight days later, eager to rebut Clinton’s charge, Obama said that as president, he might send U.S. troops into Pakistan to fight terrorists not targeted by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.
“If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” he vowed.
Critics called this overly hawkish, prompting Obama to modulate again the next day by ruling out the use of nuclear weapons to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” he told the AP before pausing.
“Involving civilians,” he added. “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”
The gaffe was criticized by Clinton, who said: “I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.”
Clinton has been criticized for a statement about Iran last year in which she said “I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table.”
On Tuesday, Clinton’s campaign declined to comment on Obama’s remark about U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Obama Argues for Civil Unions for Gays

Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007 10:13 p.m. EDT
Obama Argues for Civil Unions for Gays
Newsmax.com

Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday he wanted to tap into the “core decency” of Americans to fight discrimination against gays and lesbians, and argued that civil unions for same-sex couples wouldn’t be a “lesser thing” than marriage.
At a televised forum focusing on gay rights, the Illinois senator was asked to explain how civil unions for same-sex couples could be the equivalent of marriage. He said, “As I’ve proposed it, it wouldn’t be a lesser thing, from my perspective.
“Semantics may be important to some. From my perspective, what I’m interested (in) is making sure that those legal rights are available to people,” he said.
Story Continues Below
“If we have a situation in which civil unions are fully enforced, are widely recognized, people have civil rights under the law, then my sense is that’s enormous progress,” the Illinois Democrat said.
Obama belongs to the United Church of Christ, which supports gay marriage, but Obama has yet to go that far.
The senator was the first of six Democratic candidates scheduled to answer questions at an event described as a milestone by organizers. It marked the first time that major presidential candidates appeared on TV specifically to address gay issues, they said.
Obama called the event “a historic moment … for America.”
The two-hour forum, held in a Hollywood studio with an invited audience of 200, was co-sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group active in Democratic politics, and Logo, a gay-oriented cable TV channel that aired the forum live.
“We already won because the candidates are here,” Logo president Brian Graden said.
Of the eight Democratic candidates, two did not attend, Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware and Chris Dodd on Connecticut.
The candidates, appearing one at a time and seated in an upholstered chair, took questions from a panel that included Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese, singer Melissa Etheridge and Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart.
All of the Democratic candidates support a federal ban on anti-gay job discrimination, want to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring gays from serving openly in the military and support civil unions that would extend marriage-like rights to same-sex couples.
A majority of Americans oppose nationwide recognition of same-sex marriage and only two of the Democrats support it — Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel and Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, both longshots for the nomination.
Logo, available in about 27 million homes, wanted to hold a second forum for Republican candidates but GOP front-runners showed no interest, channel officials said.

Obama’s Church: Cauldron of Division

Obama’s Church: Cauldron of Division
Newsmax.com

Jim Davis

Thursday, Aug. 9, 2007
Presidential candidate Barack Obama preaches on the campaign trail that America needs a new consensus based on faith and bipartisanship, yet he continues to attend a controversial Chicago church whose pastor routinely refers to “white arrogance” and “the United States of Whiter America.”
In fact, Obama was in attendance at the church when these statements were made on July 22.
Obama has spoken and written of his special relationship with that pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
The connection between the two goes back to Obama’s days as a young community organizer in Chicago’s South Side when he first met the charismatic Wright. Obama credited Wright with converting him, then a religious skeptic, to Christianity. [Editor’s Note: Can Oprah Winfrey make Barack Obama president? Click Here.]
“It was … at Trinity United Church of Christ on the South Side of Chicago that I met Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who took me on another journey and introduced me to a man named Jesus Christ. It was the best education I ever had,” Obama described his spiritual pilgrimage to a group of church ministers this past June.
Since the 1980s, Obama has not only remained a regular attendee at Wright’s services in his inner city mega church, Trinity United Church of Christ, along with its other 8,500 members, he’s been a close disciple and personal friend of Wright.
Wright conducted Obama’s marriage to his wife Michelle, baptized his two daughters, and blessed Obama’s Chicago home. Obama’s best-selling book, “The Audacity of Hope,” takes its title from one of Wright’s sermons.
Because of this close relationship, questions have been raised as to the influence the divisive pastor will have on the consensus-building potential president.
Obama and Wright appear, at first blush, an unlikely pair. Wright is Chicago’s version of the Rev. Al Sharpton.
It was no surprise that Sharpton recently announced that with Wright’s backing, he was setting up a chapter of his New York-based National Action Network in Chicagoland. The chapter will be headed by Wright’s daughter, Jeri Wright.
Minister of Controversy
Obama was not the only national African-American figure to cozy up to Wright. TV host Oprah Winfrey once described herself as a congregant, but in recent years has disassociated herself from the controversial minister.
A visit to Wright’s Trinity United is anything but Oprah-style friendly.
As I approached the entrance of the church before a recent Sunday service, a large young man in an expensive suit stepped out to block the doorway.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I came to hear Dr. Wright,” I replied.
After an uncomfortable pause, the gentleman stepped aside.
On this particular July Sabbath morning, only a handful of white men — aside from a few members of Obama’s Secret Service detail — were present among a congregation of approximately 2,500 people.
The floral arrangements were extravagant. Wright, his associate pastors, choir members, and many of the gentlemen in the congregation were attired in traditional African dashiki robes. African drums accompanied the organist.
Trinity United bears the motto “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.”
Wright says its doctrine reflects black liberation theology, which views the Bible in part as a record of the struggles of “people of color” against oppression.
A skilled and fiery orator, Wright’s interpretation of the Scriptures has been described as “Afrocentric.”
When referring to the Romans, for example, he refers to “European oppression” — not addressing the fact that the Egyptians, who were also a slave society, were people of Africa.
The Trinity United Web site tells of a “commitment to the black community, commitment to the black family, adherence to the black work ethic, pledge to make all the fruits of developing acquired skills available to the black community.”
“Some white people hear it as racism in reverse,” Dwight Hopkins, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ, tells The New York Times. Blacks tend to hear a different message, Hopkins says: “Yes, we are somebody; we’re also made in God’s image.”
Controversy Abounds
Several prior remarks by Obama’s pastor have caught the media’s attention:
Wright on 9/11: “White America got their wake-up call after 9/11. White America and the Western world came to realize people of color had not gone away, faded in the woodwork, or just disappeared as the Great White West kept on its merry way of ignoring black concerns.” On the Sunday after the attacks, Dr. Wright blamed America.
Wright on the disappearance of Natalee Holloway: “Black women are being raped daily in Africa. One white girl from Alabama gets drunk at a graduation trip to Aruba, goes off and gives it up while in a foreign country and that stays in the news for months.”
Wright on Israel: “The Israelis have illegally occupied Palestinian territories for over 40 years now. Divestment has now hit the table again as a strategy to wake the business community and wake up Americans concerning the injustice and the racism under which the Palestinians have lived because of Zionism.”
Wright on America: He has used the term “middleclassness” in a derogatory manner; frequently mentions “white arrogance” and the “oppression” of African-Americans today; and has referred to “this racist United States of America.”
Bush’s Bulls–t
Wright’s strong sentiments were echoed in the Sunday morning service attended by NewsMax.
Wright laced into America’s establishment, blaming the “white arrogance” of America’s Caucasian majority for the woes of the world, especially the oppression suffered by blacks. To underscore the point he refers to the country as the “United States of White America.” Many in the congregation, including Obama, nodded in apparent agreement as these statements were made.
The sermon also addressed the Iraq war, a frequent area of Wright’s fulminations.
“Young African-American men,” Wright thundered, were “dying for nothing.” The “illegal war,” he shouted, was “based on Bush’s lies” and is being “fought for oil money.”
In a sermon filled with profanity, Wright also blamed the war on “Bush administration bulls–t.”
Those are the types of statements that have led to MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson describing Wright as “a full-blown hater.”
Wright first came to national attention in 1984, when he visited Castro’s Cuba and Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya.
Wright’s Libyan visit came three years after a pair of Libyan fighter jets fired on American aircraft over international waters in the Mediterranean Sea, and four years before the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland — which resulted in the deaths of 259 passengers and crew. The U.S. implicated Gaddafi and his intelligence services in the bombing.
In recent years, Wright has focused his diatribe on America’s war on terror and the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
For a February 2003 service, Wright placed a “War on Iraq IQ Test” on the Pastor’s Page of the church Web site. The test consisted of a series of questions and answers that clearly portrayed America as the aggressor, and the war as unjustified and illegal. Marginally relevant issues regarding Israel received attention.
The test also portrayed the Iraqi people as victims of trade sanctions, but Saddam Hussein’s propensity for using “oil for food” proceeds to build palaces rather than buy medicine was never mentioned.
At the end of the test, the pastor wrote, “Members of Trinity are asked to think about these things and be prayerful as we sift through the ‘hype’ being poured on by the George Bush-controlled media.” Obama’s campaign staff did not respond to a NewsMax request for the senator’s response to Wright’s statements.
In April, however, Obama spoke to The New York Times about Wright, and appeared to be trying to distance himself from his spiritual mentor. He said, “We don’t agree on everything. I’ve never had a thorough conversation with him about all aspects of politics.”
More specifically, Obama told the Times, “The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification,” adding “It sounds like [Wright] was trying to be provocative.”
Obama attributed Wright’s controversial views to Wright being “a child of the ’60s” who Obama said “expresses himself in that language of concern with institutional racism, and the struggles the African-American community has gone through.”
“It is hard to imagine, though, how Mr. Obama can truly distance himself from Mr. Wright,” writes Jodi Kantor of The New York Times. On the day Sen. Obama announced his presidential quest in February of this year, Wright was set to give the invocation at the Springfield, Ill. rally. At the last moment, Obama’s campaign yanked the invite to Wright.
Wright’s camp was apparently upset by the slight, and Obama’s campaign quickly issued a statement “Senator Obama is proud of his pastor and his church.”
Since that spat, there is little evidence, indeed, that Sen. Obama has sought to distance himself from the angry Church leader. In June, when Obama appeared before a conference of ministers from his religious denomination, Wright appeared in a videotaped introduction.
One of Obama’s campaign themes has been his claim that conservative evangelicals have “hijacked” Christianity, ignoring issues like poverty, AIDS, and racism.
This past June, in an effort to build a new consensus between his new politics and faith, Obama’s campaign launched a new Web page, http://www.faith.barackobama.com.
On the day the page appeared on his campaign site, it offered testimonials from Wright and two other ministers supporting Obama. The inclusion of Wright drew a sharp rebuke from the Catholic League. Noting that Obama had rescinded Wright’s invitation to speak at his announcement ceremony, Catholic League President Bill Donohue declared that Obama “knew that his spiritual adviser was so divisive that he would cloud the ceremonies.”
He noted that Wright “has a record of giving racially inflammatory sermons and has even said that Zionism has an element of ‘white racism.’ He also blamed the attacks of 9/11 on American foreign policy.”
Donohue acknowledged that Obama may have different views than Wright and the other ministers on his Web site, but “he is responsible for giving them the opportunity to prominently display their testimonials on his religious outreach Web site.”
Political pundits have suggested that Obama’s problems with Wright are not ones based on faith, but pure politics. The upstart presidential candidate needs to pull most of the black vote to have any chance of snagging the Democratic nomination. Obama’s ties to Wright and the activist African American church helps in that effort.
But the some experts same those same ties may come to haunt him if he were to win the nomination and face a Republican in the general election.
The worry is not lost on Wright.
“If Barack gets past the primary, he might have to publicly distance himself from me,” Wright told The New York Times with a shrug. “I said it to Barack personally, and he said ‘yeah, that might have to happen.'”

Democrats court liberal bloggers

Democrats court liberal bloggers
By RON FOURNIER, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 4, 7:11 PM ET
CHICAGO – Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton refused Saturday to forsake campaign donations from lobbyists, turning aside challenges from her two main rivals with a rare defense of the special interest industry.
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“A lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans, they actually do,” Clinton said, drawing boos and hisses from liberal bloggers at the second Yearly Kos convention.
Despite their own infatuations with special interest money, former Sen. John Edwards and Sen. Barack Obama put Clinton on the spot during a debate that featured seven of the eight major Democratic presidential candidates. They fielded questions from a crowd of 1,500 bloggers, most of them liberal. The gathering marked another advancement for the rising new wing of the Democratic Party, the so-called netroots.
The candidates were put on the defensive from the start.
The first question went to New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was asked why he once cited Justice Byron White, a conservative, as a model Supreme Court justice. “I screwed up on that,” he replied.
Clinton was asked what three lessons she learned from her failed health care reform effort during the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton. “It is not enough to have a plan. You’ve got to have a political strategy,” the New York senator said.
“In 90 seconds, I don’t have the time to tell you all the mistakes I made.”
Plunging headlong into the Internet era, all seven candidates fought for the support of the powerful and polarizing liberal blogosphere by promising universal health care, aggressive government spending and dramatic change from the Bush era.
Edwards received a loud cheer when he suggested his rivals were tinkering around the edges — “I just heard some discussion about negotiation, compromise” — rather than overhauling government. He said the nation needs “big change, not small change.”
The party’s 2004 vice presidential nominee, Edwards called on the field to join him in refusing donations from Washington lobbyists. He suggested that accepting lobbyists’ money would make Democrats no better than Republicans.
“We don’t want to trade their insiders for ours,” said the former North Carolina senator.
Clinton, who accepts such donations, did not respond to Edwards until much later in the forum when the question was put to her. Even then, she stalled by stating the obvious.
“I think it’s a position that John certainly has taken,” she said, drawing laughter from the crowd. It was not clear whether the audience was laughing with her or at her.
Nonetheless, the bloggers booed and hissed when Clinton insisted a moment later that nobody would believe that she could be influenced by lobbyists’ money. So would she continue to accept those donations?
“Yes, I will,” she said, arguing that plenty of lobbyists represent good causes. “They represent nurses, they represent social workers, they represent, yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people.”
Obama rejected that argument, saying Clinton should know better because special interest money helped sink her health care package in 1993. The crowd cheered wildly.
Edwards asked crowd members how many of them were represented by lobbyists. A few hands went up, and his point was made.
While they don’t accept money directly from federal lobbyists, Edwards and Obama are not above benefiting from the broader lobbying community. Both accept money from firms that have lobbying operations, and Obama in particular has tapped the networks of lobbyists’ friends and co-workers. Obama, a former state senator from Illinois, has long accepted money from state lobbyists.
Again and again, Edwards took swipes at Clinton. On terrorism, he said: “I don’t believe we’re safer. I don’t agree with Sen. Clinton on that.” In a previous debate, Clinton had said the country had been made safer.
Clinton explained Saturday that while post-9/11 reforms have improved the nation’s safety, the country is not as safe under President Bush as it should be. “I listened carefully to John. I think we have a vigorous agreement,” she said, coldly.
The Kos convention is a sign of the times.
Gone are the days when candidates and political parties could talk to passive voters through mass media, largely controlling what messages were distributed, how the messages went out and who heard them. The Internet has helped create millions of media outlets and given anyone the power to express an opinion or disseminate information in a global forum, and connect with others who have similar interests.
Clinton is viewed skeptically by the the blogging community, mainly for her history of hawkish views on Iraq. Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of Daily Kos and spiritual leader of the convention, said Clinton still might be able to mitigate her problems.
“We may decide she’s not our first choice, but she’s not a bad choice,” he said.
Appearing solo at a session of bloggers before the debate, Clinton was warmly received, especially when she jokingly blamed a microphone malfunction on the “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
One thing most bloggers have in common — regardless of their political leanings — is an intense frustration with the political establishment. And so it was a convention dripping in irony when liberal bloggers welcomed the living symbols of the Democratic status quo — seven presidential candidates.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070804/ap_on_el_pr/democrats_bloggers_5

Obama says use of nuclear weapons to fight al-Qaida ‘not on the table,’

Obama says use of nuclear weapons to fight al-Qaida ‘not on the table,’

2007-08-02 19:00:39 –
WASHINGTON (AP) – Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday he would not use nuclear weapons «in any circumstance.«I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,» Obama said, with a pause, «involving civilians.» Then he quickly added, «Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf earlier this week that he would use U.S. military force in Pakistan even without Musharraf’s permission if necessary to root out terrorists.However, when asked by The Associated Press after a breakfast with constituents whether there was any circumstance where he would be prepared or willing to use nuclear weapons to defeat terrorism and al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, Obama replied«There’s been no discussion of using nuclear weapons and that’s not a hypothetical that I’m going to discuss.When asked whether his answer also applied to the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, he said it did.Pakistan has nuclear weapons and is politically unstable, raising concerns that the current military leadership could be replaced by religious fanatics who would be less cautious in using the weapons.Obama, in a major foreign policy speech Wednesday, warned that terrorists in the mountains of Pakistan are planning another attack on the United States, after already killing 3,000 Americans in their 2001 attacks.«It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005.» he said. «If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will.

http://www.pr-inside.com/print193277.htm

Obama calls Hazleton ruling ‘a victory for all Americans’

Obama calls Hazleton ruling ‘a victory for all Americans’

Judge blocked terrorized town’s response to drugs, crime, violence caused by illegals
Posted: July 29, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com
Even as Sen. Barack Obama found himself under fire from the Hillary Clinton campaign over what she called his “naive” intention to meet with leaders of countries hostile to the U.S., the presidential hopeful praised the recent court decision overturning one city’s attempt to protect itself from hostile foreigners filling their streets with drugs, crime and gangs as “a victory for all Americans.”
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Munley overturned Hazleton, Pa.’s “Illegal Immigration Relief Act” in a 206-page opinion that declared states and municipalities have no authority to stem illegal immigration.
As WND reported, Hazleton passed an ordinance July 13, 2006, to deter housing owners from renting to illegals in an effort to reduce the crime and drain on city services associated with a large influx of illegal immigrants.
Hazleton Mayor Louis J. Barletta, an immigrant’s grandson who pushed for the strict laws last summer after two illegals were charged in a fatal shooting, said he wanted to make his town of 30,000 “the toughest place on illegal immigrants in America.”
“What I’m doing here is protecting the legal taxpayer of any race,” he told the Washington Post. “And I will get rid of the illegal people. It’s this simple: They must leave.”
Not so fast, ruled the court, denying Hazleton – and other cities that followed its lead, some legal experts suggest – the ability to police a problem the federal government has refused to address.
“Even if federal law did not conflict with Hazleton’s measures, the city could not enact an ordinance that violates rights the Constitution guarantees to every person in the United States, whether legal resident or not,” Munley wrote.
Munley also wrote that Hazleton’s law was at odds with current federal immigration policy, which he said avoids “excessive enforcement” against illegals so as not to jeopardize foreign relations. Hazleton, he said, failed to consider “the implications of the ordinances on foreign policy.”
And Obama, in a statement issued by his campaign this week, agreed. “The anti-immigrant law passed by Mayor Barletta was unconstitutional and unworkable – and it underscores the need for comprehensive immigration reform so local communities do not continue to take matters into their own hands,” he said.
“Recently, the U.S. Senate failed the American people by blocking progress on immigration reform for the second time in two years,” he added. “We cannot put this off any longer. The ongoing problems with our immigration system are dividing our country, and distracting us from the work we need to do in other important areas such as health care, education and jobs.”
The bill blocked in the Senate, however, was widely opposed and, according to polls, supported by only 22 percent of Americans. Characterized as “amnesty” by its opponents, the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill failed to provide the kinds of enforcement measures Hazleton attempted to include in its ordinance.
Obama, addressing the National Council of La Raza’s annual convention in Miami Beach last week, called the debate that defeated the Senate immigration bill “both ugly and racist in a way we haven’t see since the struggle for civil rights” and pointed to his marching in the May 2006 immigration rallies in his appeal for the group’s support.
“Find out how many senators appeared before an immigration rally last year,” he said. “Who was talking the talk, and who walked the walk – because I walked.
“I didn’t run away from the issue, and I didn’t just talk about it in front of Latino audiences.”

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56904

Obama models campaign on Reagan revolt

Obama models campaign on Reagan revolt
By: David Paul Kuhn Jul 24, 2007 06:16 PM EST
Awash in money and publicity but behind in the polls, Barack Obama, advisers say, is planning a classic insurgent’s campaign to wrest the Democratic nomination from Hillary Rodham Clinton — one that relies on a surge of momentum from early-state victories and faces a make-or-break test in the South Carolina primary. Obama is touting a new and unconventional brand of grass-roots politics, but his strategy borrows from precedents set by a previous generation of Democrats such as Jimmy Carter and Gary Hart. His advisers also invoke as inspiration a surprising Republican: Ronald Reagan. “Now, it is blasphemy for Democrats,” Obama pollster Cornell Belcher said of Reagan, “but that hope and optimism that was Ronald Reagan” allowed him to “transcend” ideological divisions within his own party and the general electorate. The upbeat message, Obama advisers say, won’t prevent the candidate from stepping up both veiled and explicit contrasts with Clinton, who he hopes to portray as an old-hat conventional politician whose varied positions on the Iraq war reflect calculation rather than leadership. Obama’s need to transcend conventional politics is evident by looking at the practical hurdles to his nomination. He boasts best-selling books and magazine cover spreads and — most relevant to his 2008 ambitions — is winning the fundraising race in both total dollars and with a record number of contributors.
But bundles of cash and good buzz have not eroded what most national polls show as a durable double-digit lead for Clinton, built largely around her nearly two-to-one advantage with Democratic women. This has Obama relying on a carom-shot candidacy, in which, come January, he will need to exploit Clinton’s weakness in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses, then have nearly all the bounces go his way in other early contests if he hopes to compete credibly once the race goes national with voting in half the states on Feb. 5. Obama strategists say for now they are not running a national campaign but are depending on what senior adviser David Axelrod calls “a sequential series” of victories. This is why Obama is already on the air with television ads in Iowa and New Hampshire and so far is out-spending Clinton in every early state.
The trend includes more than twice as much spending in Iowa ($1.6 million to Clinton’s $839,000) and nearly three times as much in South Carolina ($350,000 to $120,000) in the first half of this year.
The South Carolina Democratic primary electorate is usually more than half African-American, and Obama advisers predict these voters will back one of their own to give him an essential victory a week before Super Tuesday. History suggests the hazards of this momentum-based approach. Nearly every Democratic nominating contest for the past 40 years has featured some variation on the same script: reform candidates trying to use grass-roots energy and media momentum to beat rivals with more traditional profiles and, usually, more support from the party establishment.
Occasionally it works, as when George McGovern won the Democratic nomination on an anti-war message in 1972 or when Jimmy Carter bounced off an Iowa victory to become unstoppable in 1976.
Usually it doesn’t work, as reflected in the experiences of candidates such as Eugene McCarthy, Jerry Brown, Bill Bradley or, most recently, Howard Dean, who in 2003 was riding a wave that looked much like the one Obama is trying to surf now, before wiping out once voting actually began. A close parallel to the strategy Obama is trying to execute (with a different conclusion) is the one that took Gary Hart to the brink of a major upset of Walter Mondale in 1984.
Hart stunned the party establishment when his future-oriented “new ideas” message led to a big victory in the New Hampshire primary. Mondale soon rallied by saying Hart’s supposed new ideas reminded him of a fast-food hamburger commercial: “Where’s the beef?” Obama’s hope is to answer that question most fervently by emphasizing that he opposed the war in Iraq from the outset. Hart, who in addition to his own insurgent campaign also managed McGovern’s in 1972, sees new vitality in the old strategic model, questioning Clinton as he once did Mondale. “There still is an enormous number of people in the party who are unhappy with [Clinton] for what they perceive to be her vacillation on the war and her reluctance to confess error,” he said in an interview. “People who care about these things remember when, remember how, remember who took leadership. “She’s one of the best-known women in the world,” Hart added. “She’s been in the White House for eight years. She’s a senator from one of the largest states. And 60-plus percent of the Democratic Party wants somebody else.”

It will be a challenge for Obama to become that “anybody but Clinton” candidate, an urge that is another common reaction to Democratic front-runners. Obama advisers, speaking privately, acknowledge that the race likely will hinge on whether the debate is on Obama’s terms (Who presents the fresher and more compelling face for the future?) or on Clinton’s (Who can give voters the most reassurance about ability to do the job?). “If the debate is about changing politics and moving the country in a different direction and bringing people together, we like our odds in that debate,” said a senior official in the campaign, who insisted on not being identified in order to discuss strategy candidly. “If the debate is primarily about who is going to be a strong, tough leader, that debate, quite frankly, is probably going to benefit Hillary Clinton.” Obama’s goal is to draw contrasts with Clinton without drawing blood. “There is a difference between contrasting and attacking,” Belcher said. Obama is relying on his oratory to portray himself as the aspirational candidate — “we’re more interested in looking forward, not in looking backward,”
Obama says on the stump, inferring that Clinton is the anachronistic choice. In response, Clinton invokes the 1990s prosperity under Bill Clinton to argue that “yesterday’s news was pretty good.” Beneath this larger contest over message and public image, however, lie a number of tactical considerations. Numerous polls show Clinton running third in Iowa, behind Edwards in first place and Obama in second. Obama’s goal is to win that state or, in combination with Edwards, demonstrate that there is a powerful anti-Clinton constituency.
A weak showing for Clinton in Iowa would make New Hampshire a must-win for her. She has a lead there, including in a poll this month by CNN/WMUR. She won 36 percent to Obama’s 27 percent and Edwards’ 11 percent. The country’s first viable female candidate wins 41 percent of women and splits men with Obama at 30 percent each. If he is able to win or come close in Iowa, New Hampshire or Nevada, that would send Obama on to South Carolina. Rick Wade, an Obama adviser there, said an Obama victory in the state is “critical” to his chances. Belcher flatly predicts: “We are going to outright win South Carolina.” Democrats debated in the Palmetto State Monday night. A July CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll finds Clinton leading with 39 percent and Obama at 25 percent. Other polling in June showed Obama leading. Obama’s greatest challenge in winning South Carolina is wooing black women, who are swaying between him and Clinton. “When you talk about the broken politics of Washington, the people who are most affected by it are single women, working moms,” Axelrod said. Obama’s wife, Michelle, has already visited South Carolina several times. The campaign sees her as a key means to reach black women. By late summer or early autumn, Wade said the Obama campaign will be advertising in South Carolina, as well. But Obama’s campaign staff is aware that if they do not appear to contest the earlier electoral challenges, from Nevada to New Hampshire, they may lack the momentum to win South Carolina. Dean fell prey to the same pitfall. His campaign never recovered after imploding in Iowa. After the first 2004 caucuses, John F. Kerry rode a wave of perceived electability from Iowa to the convention, not unlike many Democrats before him. “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party falls in love with quasi-messianic figures who come along regularly with an exciting, aspirational vision for where the country must go, often coupled with an unpopular war, at least an unpopular war among progressives, and for a significant time they are ascendant within that liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” said Steve Grossman, the chairman of Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign who is now a fundraiser for Clinton. Yet, Grossman emphasized, “when the broader cross section of the Democratic Party takes a somewhat more dispassionate look at the field and says who is ready to be president of the United States and bring the kind of vision and leadership to the job, those quasi-messianic figures tend to fall short. And the more established candidate tends to win, because people are looking for something rock solid and predictable when it comes to presidential voting.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0707/5097.html

July 2007: Hillary Rodham Rodham Slams Obama for Willingness to Meet with Troublesome World Leaders

Obama, Clinton clash in YouTube debate
By Reuters, July 24, 08:35
Hillary Clinton pounced on rival Barack Obama on Monday for his willingness to meet with some troublesome world leaders during a Democratic US presidential debate starring a parade of questions posed through YouTube videos.
The debate featured video questions submitted from around the world via the Internet, from workers in Darfur refugee camps and an animated snowman worried about global warming to a strumming guitarist who sang his question about whether Democrats would raise taxes.
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It was highlighted by a clash between the top 2008 Democratic contenders after Obama said he would be willing to meet with leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea. The Bush administration considers the nations regional troublemakers.
Mr Obama, who leads Democrats in fund raising and is looking to cut Ms Clinton’s lead in polls, said it was important to search for areas “where we can potentially move forward” and added, “I think it’s a disgrace that we have not spoken to them.”
Ms Clinton, the New York senator, disagreed, saying such meetings could be used as propaganda purposes.
“Certainly, we’re not going to just have our president meet with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez and you know, the president of North Korea, Iran and Syria, until we know better what the way forward would be,” she said.
The format was designed to force candidates to drop their rehearsed answers and sound bites. It sparked lively exchanges between all eight Democratic candidates on Iraq and diplomacy, and an extended discussion of race and gender involving Mr Obama and Ms Clinton.
Asked if Muslim leaders in the Middle East would be able to negotiate and work with a woman, Ms Clinton said that after meeting various foreign leaders as first lady to President Bill Clinton in the 1990s: “There isn’t much doubt in anyone’s mind that I can be taken seriously.”
IRAQ CHALLENGES
Ms Clinton said she was proud to be running as a woman, and Mr Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president, said Americans were ready to go beyond racial divisions.
“I couldn’t run as anything other than a woman,” Ms Clinton said. “I’m excited that I may be able finally to break that hardest of all glass ceilings.”
The meeting on the campus of the Citadel military college in Charleston, South Carolina, was the fourth for Democrats and comes six months before the first votes in the 2008 nominating campaign.
South Carolina, one of the first states to vote in the 2008 nominating contest, is scheduled to hold its Democratic primary along with Florida on January 29, 2008, shortly after Iowa, Nevada and New Hampshire.
Clinton leads the Democratic field in national polls and in recent polls in South Carolina. Mr Obama, an early opponent of the Iraq war, questioned her Senate vote to authorize the war in 2002.
“The time for us to ask how we were going to get out of Iraq was before we got in,” he said.
Told by a voter that Democrats were expected to end the war after they won power in Congress in the 2006 election, anti-war Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich said party members were unwilling to take the politically risky move of cutting off war funding.
“Yes, it is politics. The Democrats have failed the American people,” he said.
More than 2,000 video questions were posted on YouTube’s site for the debate. CNN editors used more than 30 of them.
The candidates also submitted their own videos. They ranged from Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut’s joking reference to his white hair to Senator John Edwards’ attempt to lay to rest the media hoopla over his $400 haircut.
Mr Edwards’s video used the soundtrack from the musical “Hair” over a montage of photos of war in Iraq and Hurricane Katrina. “What Really Matters? You Choose” said the closing card.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c0b02a90-39b7-11dc-9d73-0000779fd2ac.html