10 posts tagged “obama”
This is fascinating. I think he only smiles in one picture. You can almost feel the weight descending onto his shoulders.
http://flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcom/sets/72157608716313371/show/
(Courtesy of BoingBoing)
In a letter published in today's NYTimes, the lead Federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 70's says this:
I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers’s terrorist activities 40 years ago when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.
Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.
Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.
So the other day there was a big Obama rally at our local High School stadium. Something like 6,000 people showed up. My son and his wife came all the way down to suburban Philly from Hoboken and stood in line for several hours to get in.
I didn't feel like standing in line for hours so I didn't go. Later in the day, though, I was sitting out in the back yard and I heard all this commotion down the street. I poked my head around the corner and saw that the street was blocked off by police tape a few blocks down where there is a little shopping district. So I took a stroll down and there was a small crowd gathered outside the neighborhood flower shop where Barack had stopped to buy flowers for his wife for their 16th wedding anniversary. Lots of cops and Secret Service and big ugly looking SUVs parked outside.
After a few minutes, Barack came out with his dozen white roses, tossed them into the back of one of the vehicles and came across the street work the crowd. Except for one idiot with a McCain sign who kept shouting "When was the last time you saw Bill Ayers?" it was definitely an adoring crowd. I even got to shake hands with the man!
At one point, waiting for Barack to come out of the flower shop I was standing there with my hands in my pockets and a Secret Service guy came up behind be and grabbed my elbow and said 'Please take you hands out of your pockets, sir!" Yikes....
Local news report here.
.
Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese: “Today, presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain announced he has chosen first term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his choice to be his Vice Presidential running mate. Although only holding an executive, state-wide office for less than two years, Gov. Palin has already shown that she is a fierce opponent of equality.
“America may not know much about Sarah Palin, but based on what our
community has seen of her, we know enough,” said Human Rights Campaign
President Joe Solmonese. “Sarah Palin not only supported the 1998
Alaska constitutional amendment banning marriage equality but, in her
less than two years as Governor, even expressed the extreme position of
supporting stripping away domestic partner benefits for state workers.
When you can’t even support giving our community the rights to health
insurance and pension benefits, it’s a frightening window into where
she stands on equality.”
Thanks Fox News!!
SteveP's prediction: I think this is going to prove disastrous for McCain. The only effective argument he's had against Obama is his lack of experience. As Obama spokesman Bill Burton says: “Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency."
ADDENDUM:
The Washington Post: The McCain campaign had make little secret of the fact that they wanted to pick a woman as the Arizona senator's running mate, believing that the rift caused by the protracted primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton gave them an opportunity to pick up scads of disgruntled women.
But, as Sensible Shoes points out: I was a Hillary supporter until the 11th hour. Well, I'm still a
Hillary supporter. But I'm not a stupid puma. If McCain thinks I will
vote for a conservative, anti-choice, anti-gay, pro-drilling candidate
just because of her ovaries, he is wrong. And hopefully he's wrong
about all the other 11th-hour Hillary supporters.
ADDENDUM 2:
Paul Begala: Is McCain Out Of His Mind?
ADDENDUM 3:
New York Times: The selection of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska proved quintessentially McCain — daring, hazardous and defiantly off-message. He demonstrated that he would not get boxed in by convention as he sought to put a woman next in line to the presidency for the first time. Yet in making such an unabashed bid for supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, he risked undercutting his central case against Senator Barack Obama.
“Here’s what I’m worried about,” said Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and former aide to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush. “McCain had to protect his reputation as an opponent of status quo Washington. He had to pick someone with the shortest Washington résumé. He did that. He picked someone the right wing is going to be happy about. But it’s a gamble.”
“The question is,” Mr. Rogers continued, “what does it do to the argument that Obama’s not ready?”
The question is particularly acute for Mr. McCain, who turned 72 on Friday and would be the oldest person to assume the presidency if he won in November. His campaign now needs to convince the public that it can imagine in the Oval Office a candidate who has spent just two years as governor of a state with a quarter of the population of Brooklyn.
So I'm at my folks' house over the weekend and my Dad has Fox News blaring all day and this Neil Cavuto guy is on with Malia Lazu, an Obama supporter, and they're talking about the whole seven houses thing, and Cavuto actually says:
"Malia, you know this stuff on rich and all goes back and forth because you can argue one guy's a little uppity and ah, it's a zero sum game right? Where do we go with this?"
No he di'ent!!!
Remember the media flap when Joe Biden called Barack 'clean'?
How 'bout UPPITY???? Haven't heard much about that!
Cavuto, anti-elitist that he is, also proudly (and I'm sure falsely) admitted that he doesn't know what arugula is. Oh, and can someone please point me to the source of his statement that Obama was 'whining about the cost of arugula'?
OK... I am totally disgusted. Who appointed this guy to vet the Presidential candidates. And you know that whatever happens here will be a major influence on the campaign. At this point, I'm not going to vote for either of these guys! Maybe it's because I just finished The Age Of American Unreason, but I'm tired of this pandering to the delusional.......
ADDENDUM: "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" - U.S. Constitution, Article VI.
ADDENDUM 2: An excellent summary of The Age Of American Unreason.
Let me preface this by saying that I voted for Barack Obama in yesterday's Pennsylvania primary because I believe, as he does, that we need to get beyond lapel pins and what somebody's pastor said and talk about the real issues we face. But after Obama's anemic performance, I have to wonder whether Mrs. Clinton has a point.
Obama was strong in the city of Philadelphia and around Harrisburg and State College but not as strong as expected in the Philly suburbs. My county, Montgomery, was, I thought, an Obama stronghold, but he lost to Clinton 51% to 49%. And Obama has continuing problems in the large industrial states with blue collar white men. One commentator said today that this doesn't necessarily mean that those voters will desert the Democrats in the general election, but I have to disagree. Those voters are just the ones who will flip for McCain in a McCain-Obama race. Of course they may do the same in a McCain-Clinton race, but that doesn't seem as likely to me.
It's frightening and amazing to me that we have a reviled Republican President, a presumptive Republican nominee who is unpopular with a large segment of his own party's base, and two very strong Democratic candidates, but the Dems may still manage to blow it once again.
