No, right wingers have been using the Muslim and Madrassa charges against Obama for months.

Your claims of innocence by the right are further undermined as you distort Obama’s positions with false claims that he believes that those making $250,000 are stealing from the struggling working people. Haven’t you noticed that much of Obama’s support comes from the affluent? Many of us who would be taxed more by Obama’s plans are still supporting him because of believing the country (and ourselves) would be better off with him than with Republican policies.

The official claim is that his health care plan will be paid for by a combination of taxes and by savings. However, as I noted in posts last year when the candidates were putting out their plans, all of the candidates were overly optimistic as to the savings which would be achieved.

It’s true in pretty much every election that campaign promises cost more than can actually be afforded. That’s a common problem of politics. However while Democrats campaign like that, Republicans try to actually govern like that.

I like Obama, I even like what he says. Health Care for everyone, free college tuition, raises for all the “working” people, love not war. The problem is it isn’t credible for him to be able to do all those things taking money only from those mean nasty people who make over $250,000 who don’t really deserve the money anyway because they spend 12 hours a day stealing from the struggling working man who spends 8 hours a day at his job. There aren’t enough people who make above $250,000 to pay for everything Obama wants to do in addition to paying for the title wave of Medicare costs that is bearing down on us. We don’t have enough money now to pay the bills of all the love we have been promising people for the next 50 years. The current shortfall for what we owe is the equivalent of $4500 per family in the U.S. Those who make over $250,000 a year constitute 2 % of the tax payers. If you take everything they make you will be able to pay for some of it, but it won’t cover all of the other 98%. Where are we going to get the money for the rest of it?

You guessed it. Those poor unfortunates who make less than $250,000 that all those greedy bastards who make more have been stealing from are going to have to pony up some money too. And that only covers the miserly pittance that we give out now, Obama wants us to do more. I would be a lot more enamored with the man if he started telling us how he is going to pay for it. Eliminating the tax cuts that GW gave isn’t going to cut it. He needs to tell us not only who is going to be paying more but how much they are going to be paying. Put some numbers on the table. I used to hope that the growth of the economy was going to be able to do it. People smarter than me like Greenspan says it can’t do it. We have to make fundamental changes to decrease the benefits and increase the taxes just to get by on what we are doing now, and Obama wants to be my nanny, momma, and rich uncle too? The only saving Grace is that we all know he isn’t going to be able to do all he says and so we don’t really have to take him seriously when he says it. We can just enjoy the beauty of his words and appreciate that he cares about us.

How many times are you going to post the same incorrect statements?

There are no similarities etween Obama’s views and Farrakhan’s views. Obama is not a socialist. His economic advisers are from the University of Chicago and are staunch capitalists, not socialists.

Obama did not receive a “perfect” 100 score from either the ADA or The National Journal. In addition, their scores have nothing to do with Marxism. His scores are far more libertarian than anything else. Obama got his points for supporting transparency in government, ethics reform, and civil liberties issues. He also got points for opposing the war and for opposing restrictions on stem cell research. There’s nothing Marxist here.

Obama is not calling for nationalized health care. He has not been ranting against business. His tax increases will only affect those making over $250,000 are simply scale back the advantages to the wealthy given by Bush. He supports an individual right to own guns.

The picture has been spread widely, not only by LGF. It means nothing. Obama is a Christian. He also has a father from Africa. The headgear has nothing to do with supporting radical Muslim groups as the nutty right wingers are claiming.

The first photo was just kind of silly. But this second one is a bit more serious.

Little Green Footballs is currently one of the only Blogs linking to it.

Barack H. Obama just scored a perfect 100 as the most “Liberal/Socialist” member of the United States Senate from the distinguished non-partisan National Journal. You don’t get a perfect Leftwing 100 score without having at least some shred of Fascism in your belief structure.

Obama also scored a perfect 100 from the ultra-Marxist ADA for the past three years in a row.

Tell us Ron, how can one score higher than 100 on such surveys? How can one be an even more proponent of bigger government than a perfect 100 scorer?

Obama calls for Nationalized Health Care, rants against Business, calls for tax raises, and wants to stomp on the Rights of Americans to own guns.

Sound familiar?

The exact platform of the Nation of Islam.

The media does pay too little attention to policy, but that isn’t limited to Obama. The media always prefers the horse race to matters of substance. That doesn’t mean that Obama supporters aren’t aware of of his policy positions. There have been interviews which do go into them in depth. He also has considerable information at his web site.

There has been a lot of anti-Hillary posting in the blogosphere as a consequence of her own actions. It seems that hardly a day goes by in which there isn’t yet another outrageous statement or action from her campaign, which leads to reactions.

The Clinton campaign contacts bloggers as well as the media with their talking points and invitations to conference calls. I’ve outright told Clinton’s people that they were only playing into Obama’s hands by their actions. Each time they come out with their next dishonest attack we have a new round of posts defending Obama. In the process, Clinton makes her own lack of integrity and her own tactics a major campaign issue. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t also posting and arguments as to why we support Obama.

Obama has discussed how he will deal with the hyperpartisan atmosphere. More importantly, he has demonstrated this. This includes looking at how he was successful in the Illinois legislature and how he has responded to partisan attacks during the campaign.

Another Clinton meme is to hold Obama to an absurd standard. Nobody expects that he will be able to sweep away all the partisanship. What is important is that he is pursuing the correct policies far more often than Clinton, and that he does show an ability to find solutions which transcend many of the left/right partisan divisions. In contrast, Clinton acts as a lightening rod and worsens the situation.

I absolutely agree with you that Obama is not, in fact, a blank slate.
However, his policy statements are largely ignored by the media, blogs and commentators. Consequently, the support he generates is, largely, due to the PERCEPTION of him as a blank slate on which each person can write this own hopes. How else to explain Obama T-shirts in ‘red’ territory? Many of his policy staements are directly in oppostion to GOP political primary principles.

To legitemize his candidacy, then, more attention should be spent on discussing and highlighting his policy poitions. Just focusing on Hillary take-downs helps to create the blank slate image which you are decrying.

One question is: why I oppose Hillary.
A more important question is: why I support Obama. There is a shortage of commentary on that side of the scale.

In assition, I also note that while he has made his policies clear on many issues, Obama has never explained how he plans to achieve unity in this hyper partisan atmosphere. That’s a core hope everyone feels, but few want to cede an inch in its purssuit.

That is just another untrue meme being pushed by the Clinton campaign.

Obama is not a blank slate. Despite the claims of Clinton supporters, his speeches deal with specifics of policy as much as Clinton has. Obama has issued details of his plans, while often Clinton has ducked the hard questions.

Obama’s proposals are also far superior to Clinton’s. For example, The Washington Post has compared the economic recovery plans of both. Obama received a A-. Clinton received a C-, barely beating John McCain’s D+.

Their histories show that Obama would do a much better job than Clinton in terms of dealing with GOP obstructionism. For example, Clinton’s attempts at health care reform flopped while Obama was successful in overcoming Republican opposition to his health care proposals in the Illinois legislature. Clinton’s policies are often based upon a narrow minded viewpoint of doing things her way or not at all. Obama shows far better understanding of opposing viewpoints and the ability to seek compromises without violating basic principles, and the Clintons typically do in their triangulation.

To some degree Obama is a gamble. However, looking at how bad the alternatives are in Clinton and McCain, I’ll go with that gamble. At least Obama has been right on numerous issues where both Clinton and McCain have been wrong, and his policy proposals are much stronger than those offered by Clinton and McCain.

That story has been going around for a while. I had a post yesterday after the guy failed a polygraph test on both of these accusations.

By all appearances, Obama is an intelligent and honorable man. Those excellent qualities by themselves don’t guarantee a successful presidency, however. So far, his campaign seems to be based on being all things to all people.
His campaign thrives on being a blank slate when it comes to explaining just how he plans to achieve the unity he preaches.
Seeing Obama as the Messiah come to save American politics is dangerous, because even the smallest shortcoming will be magnified into a major failure, when juxtaposed against the promise of the campaign.

There is very little analysis of just what an Obama presidency would mean in terms of policy changes. How would he deal with GOP obstructionism in Congress? How would he deal with a conservative backlash?
Before awarding Obama the laurel leaf of victory, some time should be taken from Clinton exposes in order to come to a realistic understanding of Obama, and I emphasize REALISTIC, as opposed to idealistic).

It’s great to hope, but anchoring hopes on an undefined and nebulous
strategy is rash in the extreme.

There’s more.

I was at the dentist yesterday getting a cavity filled and the tabloid The Globe was on the table in the waiting room. I opened it up and there was the Obama bimbo eruption!

Evidently, the Clinton camp found some guy — yep, a GUY to come forward and claim he:

1. smoked crack with Barack
2. performed oral sex on Barack

Of course, the MSM won’t touch this but it just goes to show how truly desperate Team Hillary has become. I hope when she returns to the senate, she loses her committee chairs. The woman is unbalanced and not well.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Clinton’s campaign released a smear and then tried to deny they were behind it. They also tried this with the bogus plagiarism attacks, but AP put out a story outright saying that the charges originated from the Clinton campaign as opposed to the news media as Clinton claimed.

Once again you show that it is you that is the hypocrite as you distort the facts to make your argument.

I did not criticize Paul for his endorsements per se. I was quite specific that the issue was not who endorsed Paul as a politician cannot control who endorses them. In contrast, I was criticizing Paul’s own actions, which are quite different from Obama’s.

Paul did not speak out against Don Black and others for quite a while. They didn’t say anything for months after it was a controversy, and then it was half hearted criticism. Paul refused to return the contribution from Black.

In contrast Obama criticized Farrakhan even before he received the endorsement, and there were no contributions involved.

I criticized Paul for soliciting the support from right wing extremists. In contrast, Obama has been criticizing them.

I criticized Paul because his views overlapped with the right winger whose support he solicited. Paul’s newsletters show evidence of racism. Paul’s views on state’s rights and his belief that Constitutional liberties do not apply to the states allow white supremacists and Nazi’s to promote their views.

In contrast, Obama’s views are quite distinct from Farrakhan’s. Instead of having writings which express agreement with Farrakhan’s views, Obama’s public statements and writings show the opposite. When political opponents first tried to tie his views to Farrakhan’s multiple Jewish organizations issued a statement defending Obama. All the uncommitted Jewish members of the Senate also released a statement of support for Obama defending him against the bogus charges.

There is just no comparison between the situation with Paul and Obama. Of course you are well aware of these specific criticisms of Paul as you provided some of the arguments regarding Paul’s ties to extremism. However, as you are the hypocrite here, you choose to ignore these facts.

You were merciless against Paul on this.

Ron, you are really starting to show your hypocrisy here.

I hate Naziism too. But Farrakhan is just as bad, even worse than David Duke and the like.

The International Herald Tribune, which is owned by the New York Times, broke the story today.

Needless to say, the MSM is refusing to own up. Oh well.

Monday, February 25, 2008

In the latest New York Times/CBS News poll of national voting preferences, Barack Obama bests his rival Hillary Clinton by a commanding 16 points.

For the first time, Barack Obama has moved ahead of Hillary Clinton nationally, with 54 percent of Democratic primary voters saying they wanted to see him nominated, while 38 percent preferred Mrs. Clinton.

A new USA Today/Gallup Poll released Monday showed a similar result, 51 percent for Mr. Obama to 39 percent for Mrs. Clinton.