The Trail: A Daily Diary of Campaign 2008

To mmcneal:

By your own words, the injection of race started with "Clinton's innocuous LBJ/MLK statements." You got it exactly right...the Clintons started it. Let's get real here: Bill Clinton, and now through Hillary, are the most devious and slick politicians this generation has seen. Slicker than Rove/Bush. They know exactly what they are doing, at every turn casting aspersions and "innocuous" statements as you say.
- Do you think it was coincidence when Hillary stated she thought Barack was Christian, "as far as she knew." Come on don't be naive.
- Was it coincidence that Hillary met with Marc Rich's wife in the weeks before Rich was pardoned by Clinton? Why would they pardon a convicted felon?
- Why is it that Hillary would slam her Republican opponent in her 2000 Senate election about not releasing his tax returns when she will not do it now? Why won't she release them before Pennsylvania (she claims she will but I can guarantee she won't)? What is she hiding? And she is hiding something.
- If you were a senator, would you really vote for a "war" amendment WITHOUT EVEN READING THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE? Probably not if you were already planning to run for President and you need to show you are a tough guy? You needed the vote regardless of the outcome.
- And is it coincidence that Hillary decided to become anti-war, oh, let me think, that's right...right around the time she was considering officially running for President? That's right...vote for the war, so I can act tough...but I need to get my base so I can turn against the war now....Or as I like to think of it...I was against the war right after I was for it.
- And I guess I should assume that Hillary voted for George Bush I in 1992. After all, Bill Clinton had much less experience then Bush back then and we all know it is all about experience. After all, Hillary, with all of her experience voted for the war...what a good decision...oh wait...that's right...she voted for the war before she voted against it.
- And oh yes, all the wonderful things she did as First Lady...well if I didn't know any better, I would think she was running our Foreign Policy. Unfortunately for her, most everyone is coming out and saying her role was largely ceremonial and peripheral. And these are the Democrats like George Mitchell saying that!!
- And what about the ~200K jobs she was going to get people in New York after she was elected senator in 2000...oh, whoops, my bad...she was "overly exuberant" I believe is how she phrased it...

To this day, she had not admitted she made a mistake with her vote in the lead up to war. I don't think I want a leader who can't admit when they make a mistake. I definitely have seen Barack admit to them.

"Well how many terrorist attacks have we had on our soil since then?"

I am tired of hearing this illogical comment to justify invading Iraq. First of all, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. It was Al Quaida based in Afghanistan. Secondly, so how many terrorist attacks did we have on our soil in the years before 9/11? One, the WTC attack of 1993 (if you ignore Oklahoma City). So, we didn't attack anyone after the 1993 attack and 8 years later, we had another. If that pattern continues, the fact that we haven't had an attack since 9/11 is irrelevant. Attacking Iraq has no bearing. Perhaps increased security here on our soil does help.

i can't think of one advantage we have gained from the war.4000 dead kids, high gas prices,500 billion gone to another country, are we crazy?

i can't think of one advantage we have gained from the war.4000 dead kids, high gas prices,500 billion gone to another country, are we crazy?

I wonder how many people who claim they "support the war" and "support the troops" have paid their share of the war effort. The families and friends of those who have lost people in Iraq have paid far, far more than their share, but that's a relatively small percentage of people. Most of the "war supporters" haven't paid a thing. The US is borrowing money from overseas to fund this little adventure, we haven't started paying taxes on it yet, and the bill won't come due until the Criminal in Chief and his henchmen are long gone from the public stage.

If the government were to present everyone with a bill each month for the cost of this war then the dialog about the war would change instantly.

It is very easy for Obama to criticize others over their tough decisions on issues that were of little consequence to Illinois state legislators in March of 2003. He did not have to cast a nationally scrutinized vote on whether or not to wage war on Iraq. Is this his way of deflecting attention from the fact that he hasn't got a record to stand on? As in his speech on race yesterday, in which he further perfected his rhetorical diversionary skills, he served America another helping of his standard fare: a big exertion to inspire with little of substance therein. And in yesterday's speech he conspicuously failed to explain how he was able to tolerate his pastor's hateful views over the past twenty years or why, for his highly-qualified, far-too-late disavowal of those views, we should accept him as our nation's self-appointed arbiter on matters of race. He clearly hopes America won't notice his profound cynicism. Once again Obama has covered-up his own manipulative use of race with a speech on what a contentious issue race is in America. What an interesting moment to have such a revelation. Did this just occur to Obama over this past weekend? And if he isn't actually that naïve or disingenuous, why did he stay with the racist minister for two decades? On the contrary, it seems that Obama would like to make race an issue, as demonstrated by his deflections, which serve as a subterfuge to divert the attention of voters from the fact that he has no substantive policy positions and lacks adequate experience for the Presidency. In fact, he has deftly employed the issue of race since January, when he condemned Clinton's innocuous LBJ/MLK comments (the insidious subtext of which, if you recall, was that Hillary was casting aspersions on the achievements and legacy of MLK). Few critics seem to recognize that yesterday's speech constituted yet another in a series of carefully conceived acts quite brilliantly executed to subtly pander to multiple, diverse demographics through disparate discourses of race, even as he asserts that the campaign shouldn't be about race, per se.
It should surprise no one then that Obama's identity is still questioned. It is so precisely because the racial distinctions on which it relies are patently specious. He expects us to accept that in America today you're "black" if you have one white parent, not "white" for having one black parent. If Obama were more imaginative he would have avoided "black" and "white" distinctions, and become the post-racial candidate he claimed to be thereby. Instead, his campaign's continuous deflections of criticism via the issue of race ultimately demean every American.
Obama consistently refers--as he did in detail in yesterday's speech--to his family background, as if to suggest that it imbued him with an intrinsic comprehension of contemporary issues that having just one more white parent would have inhibited. This implicitly insults anyone who doesn't think people should be defined by the accident of their race. We understand you better than you think, Barack, and though many of us yawn at your rhetorical I'm-the-multi-cultural-candidate-who-personifies-"diversity"-in-America ploy, we also recognize that it is a powerful wedge tool among certain demographics in this campaign. Obama's attempts to use that tool expose his true motives; he is not the conciliator he advertises himself to be.
Let us remember by way of underscoring this that his speech on race was a gambit by Obama's campaign to "contain" the damage from the revelation that Obama's minister and spiritual adviser of the past twenty years is a vile racist, radical black nationalist and anti-American hothead. What tactics could better demonstrate the hypocrisy of Obama himself and his campaign?
Yet for all his comic posturing and alleged disagreement with the minister whose views he now claims to disavow--but which just last week were acceptable--a minister who he still says he cannot disown (anymore than he can disown his grandmother...), Obama continues to take advice from a shamelessly homophobic misogynist named Donnie McClurkin, another fact that should disgust his ostensibly "progressive" supporters. It seems that the better we get to know the freshman Senator from Illinois, the harder it is to believe that he is a transformational figure of any sort. Rather, he has proven that he is just another conventional politician whose judgment appears increasingly dubious. He opposes bigotry only selectively, and so clearly does not represent "change we can believe in." That arrogant claim now surely rings hollow to all but the dullest ears.
It has been obvious for some time to all but his most ardent supporters that if elected the neophyte Obama will not be able to govern effectively. That would be a disaster for our nation. Charisma won't win the war on terror. Inspiring rhetoric will not improve our faltering economy. And a divisive debate on race matters can only be counter-productive to the reconciliation our nation deserves. It should be obvious to all that Obama is no leader. Let us hope then that Democrats resoundingly declare: "no, we can't" have someone as untrustworthy as Obama in the White House.

How would Obama voted for the war resolution had he been in the senate? We don't know and he doesn't know. Probably present, because that was a tough vote. 8o% of American believed Hussain had WMDs at that time. I would have voted against the bill, but I had more info than they probably did. I was the only person in my coffee club who didn't believe in WMDs. 8 Dems and 7 Repubs. I haven't second guessed the 29 Dem senators who voted for it. Most are great Americans. It would not have mattered. Bush was going to war anyway. How many of you Obamanites thought he had WMDs? I do know Obama has shown no leadership in stopping the war since being in the senate. Voted right along with Hillary. I would never believe any of his words because of all his lying.

"Well how many terrorist attacks have we had on our soil since then?"

That's beside the point since 4,000 American soldiers have been sent to Iraq to die. That's more American deaths than in 9/11 all of whom need not have died in pursuit of a pointless war. Is the life of an American soldier worth less than the life a civilian?

Given the established (and now admitted) absence of any connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and the absence of any WMD in Iraq it cannot be credibly asserted that the war has made the US in any way safer from terrorist attack.

Senator Obama is right. There is a gap between those people who vote for war because of their politics or because they want to pander to their constituents and those who vote for war because of moral principle.

Senator Clinton abdicated any sort of moral principle when she voted for the war. She did not bother to read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting to authorize the war. She was playing politics. It's time that people understand that she put our soldiers' lives below her own political ambitions. She voted for the war because of the conviction that if she did not vote for it that she would be perceived as weak on national security issues.

Politicians like Clinton think that voting for war is a way of emphasizing their concern for our national security without really thinking about what actions we should take to actually make our nation more secure. Today, it is obvious that to go to war without our usual allies and without international support only weakened our nation's security. So instead of improving our welfare, she hurt it.

Molly Ivins, before she died, explained exactly why Clinton's cowardice rendered her unfit to be President. Google "Molly Ivins Clinton President" for the relevant essay.

"These are the mistaken and misleading arguments we hear from those who have failed to demonstrate how the war in Iraq has made us safer."

Well how many terrorist attacks have we had on our soil since then?

McCain is wrong on the war- it is terrible and need not have happened in the first place. Thus;

Obama vs Clinton vs McCain:

http://newsusa.myfeedportal.com/viewarticle.php?articleid=76

Senator Obama is right. There is a gap between those people who vote for war because of their politics or because they want to pander to their constituents and those who vote for war because of moral principle.

Senator Clinton abdicated any sort of moral principle when she voted for the war. She did not bother to read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting to authorize the war. She was playing politics. It's time that people understand that she put our soldiers' lives below her own political ambitions. She voted for the war because of the conviction that if she did not vote for it that she would be perceived as weak on national security issues.

Politicians like Clinton think that voting for war is a way of emphasizing their concern for our national security without really thinking about what actions we should take to actually make our nation more secure. Today, it is obvious that to go to war without our usual allies and without international support only weakened our nation's security. So instead of improving our welfare, she hurt it.

Molly Ivins, before she died, explained exactly why Clinton's cowardice rendered her unfit to be President. Google "Molly Ivins Clinton President" for the relevant essay.

$700 million a day, More than a Trillion borrowed dollars spent. Thousands of Americans, more than 100 thousand Iraqi dead. Americas image in the world trashed. There is no war to win. Only a misguided, ideologically-driven, reckless foreign adventurism by those "strong on defense" Republicans.

It doesn't matter if we leave in a week, in a year or even 4 years ago, there will be civil war in Iraq and they'll have to solve their own problems.

What a Maroon! He had every opportunity to BLAST Bushie and Sherkoff, and instead just Posed!

The Security gap is due to the FACT DHS efforts have been getting WASTED in the STUPID "War on Drugs", instead of actually helping against Terrorism!

Still, Most Ports are un-screened!

THAT, is UN-Forgivable! ;~)