Post-SOTU Al-Kaidee-On-The-Run OPEN THREAD (3 UPDATES)

Dear Susan:

It is really obnoxious (and creepily anti-man) the way you attempt to use the word “scoring” as if the (many, important) endorsements that Obama is getting are somehow sexual victories for him.

I think you probably have some very, very deep-seated issues with men and your relationships to men. I encourage you to engage in some soul searching.

Beyond that, you have transformed a web site that used to be an insider’s take on middle east foreign policy into a bizarre, quasi-tabloid, freakishly obsessive anti-Obama web site. Six months ago, this was a web site that I used to frequent, looking for information and insights into middle east current events and policies. Then, you took over. Today, it is a web site I visit twice a month, and see nothing but obsessive anger post after anger post, all directed at Barack Obama, a public figure whom you seem to have a really queer personal fixation on and hatred of.

I encourage you to take a time out, for your own sake.

Susan -

Do you understand also that making references to aggressive male sexuality (”scoring”) with respect to a black male candidate overtly “plays the race card” or in fact, is a thinly-veiled (if veiled at all) cheap exploitation of a racist, anti-black stereotype?

The exact same thing that the Clintons are being hung from a yard arm over? At least Bill only compared Obama to Jesse Jackson (as if that’s really bad). You, on the other hand, are getting Stagger Lee.

Really, its creepy of you. You might consider yourself “progressive” and “feminist” but you are coming across like the (overtly racist) Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who spoke out against giving black men the right to vote.

I didn’t watch the SOTU. I carried through with my intentions I mentioned in the earlier thread and watched DVD’s of The Dog Whisperer. It was very impressive. Cesar Millan used his techniques on a threatening, dog-aggressive Rottweiler and turned him into a big sweetie. I’m thinking that maybe we could get Cesar to put a choke collar on George, take him to his dog pack in LA, and teach him some manners. He’s been a spoiled brat who’s always gotten his own way all his life. All he needs is a calm assertive pack leader. Who knows? It might even work with Dead-Eye Dick.

To the previous poster, with all due respect, shut-up. Susan was not making a sexual reference. Personally, I believe Obama views politics as a sport. His arrogance gets in the way of him recognizing that politics is not a game, it is about the experiences of people’s lives. He is a little, little man, and that is coming through more and more these days. I once thought I could support him, but he has demonstrated his arrogance again and again and again. It is shocking for a man who actually has so few accomplishments. I say this not to be mean, or to bash Senator Obama, but because I am actually disgusted with his arrogance and gracelessness.

Dear some guy,
What a bunch of sanctimonious bullshit. It sure sounds to me as if you’re projecting. If you’ve got issues, get some tissues, OK? Feel free to rebut her but your psycho drivel is way over the line.

I was not disappointed when I heard the 16 words I was waiting for. “Iran has longer range missle and is making nukes for desert…Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran”

Keith O played them and had to remind the viewers that this said tonight and not 5 years ago….

Bush’s speech reminded me of warmed over leftovers with a dollup of spaghetti sauce on top for taste. It was like “Deja Vu all over again.” He revisited a lot of ideas he’d covered in previous SOTU diatribes, to no discernable effect. Reminded me of that old commercial, “Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars.” Bush makes these high falutin speeches with bold ideas and then ten minutes later he pulls an Emily Latella: “Never mind!” And how many times has he announced a solution to the Palestinian Question? Whenever he has a spare 10 minutes he figures that that’s all it will take because the answer is so SIMPLE. As Homer Simpson would say, “D’OH!”

It’s just like Rumsfeld’s “snowflakes.” As Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld would shower subordinates with urgent memos in such quantities that they were dubbed, “snowflakes.” At first the departments were tied in knots as they struggled to implement the memos. But they soon learned that Rumsfeld FORGOT about them as soon as they were written, and they could be safely ignored. Rummie’s reach exceeded his grasp. A good epitaph for the Bush Administration, I’d say.

Chris Hitchens pillories Hillary’s husband as Slate. The magazine started to help insert more right leaning topics into the mainstream, from a supposedly independent perspective.

Huffington was running it without the author byline on their front page, after complaint they added his name, as a qualifier of its author, to any who cared to link it for a read.

The statement itself, ‘Clintons are playing race card,’ is what they want out there.

Never mind that Hitchens is a windbag and hates the Clintons, to the point he made a cottage industry attacking on them.

It surprisingly matches previous opposition talking points put out by campaign staffers.

I gotta agree, in part, with someguy.

Not about the scoring.

But about what happened to this site. I too used to come here for intellegent comment on important issues.

Its like a junior-high chat site now, for anti-Obama hackery. WHats up with this?

At another site I speculated that Rezko’s $3.5 million dollar friend was part of the Contra network, our Iraq side of the deal.

Seeing he lived in London the INC immediately came to mind.

Turns out he’s involved with both, as most of the contras were.

The Luxembeourg banking interests of Auchi, that hooked up with Rezko, also was a middle man for arms dealing into Iraq with a contra financier.

Denis Robert und Ernest Backes, two journalists, have written a book, Revelations, about the Leir/Auchi connection.

The book covers Auchi to a considerable extent.

He facilitated its entry and integration into World business and Finance. Henry J. Leir, who died three years ago in New York, headed many companies for decades from New York, Luxemborg and Lausanne, in many areas (raw materials, metalls, weapons, finance), and by the fifties he was already one of the world’s richest men. In close cooperation with the political establishment he used Luxemburg as a basis and diving board for his businesses. He succeeded in making the country one of the most trustworthy of America’s partners. His nearness to the Republican party as to the Government of Luxemburg and the court of the duke he employed to the glory and success of his divergent businesses. ”

A man who, one would assume, would shrink with horror from partnering with a minion of Saddam. Yet Auchi and Leir seemed to hit it off. Perhaps this is because Leir, and Luxemborg banks, have a long history of supping with various devils. Roberts’ book reveals more than the machinations of Auchi in the present. Ernst Backes was a central figure, apparently, in the setting up of an international clearing house in Luxemborg. He was involved, for instance, in the transfer of seven million dollars from a private American bank to the national bank of Algeria in 1980, which was the basis for the arms for hostages deal cemented between Reagan and Iran.

http://limitedinc.blogspot.com/2003/04/bollettino-bagmen-coups-are-expensive.html
Unfortunately, his link will no longer hook up for me to verify. Some corroborating links do hook up, mostly UK guardian, other EU papers. The two key items do not, but contain directive headers.
Look further for Blair’s connection–Labour blocks extradition of Iraqi tycoon | Special reports
observer.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,887393,00.html

Again, his good friend appears to have been a middle man for Israeli proliferation as well.

The Observer article doesn’t touch on his connections with one Henry J. Leir. If you touch on that connection, you can get sued for libel, as Le Soir in Belgium found out. There is an article of mysterious provenance floating on the web none the less, in which it is claimed that Auchi was connected as an arms dealer with Leir. Leir, apparently, is golden: a major player in channeling enriched uranium to Israel — again, for you libel lawyers out there, this is all wink wink. Leir endowed a chair at Tufts university in — oh, spirit of the age — peace, and seems to be an establishment figure in America — but in Europe he has a different reputation.

Six degrees of separation from the yellowcake forgery?

I may be able to buy the use of “scoring” as a sexual term. But as a racist term? Really? I know very few men, straight or gay, black or white or brown or…who don’t like to “score”. How natural male physiology has become racist is beyond me. But, you know, I have been indoors reading for the last couple hours so maybe all non-blacks suddenly became eunuchs during that time.

Why yes, Rezko’s overseas financier is indeed an Oil for Food holdover. He aslo is connected with direct ties to the October Surprise, from the above thread comment.

Iraqi Born Billionaire Has Stake in Bank That Holds Oil for Food Funds
By TIMOTHY L. O’BRIEN
http://www.puk.org/web/htm/news/nws/news030430b.html

One of the largest private shareholders in BNP Paribas, the French bank that holds more than $13 billion in Iraqi oil funds administered through the United Nation’s oil for food program, is an Iraqi born businessman who once helped to arm Iraq in the 1980’s and brokered business deals with Saddam Hussein’s government, according to public records and interviews.

The involvement of the businessman, the British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, raises questions about how carefully the United Nations has vetted the bank in its continuing role as repository of oil for food funds.

The oil for food program began in 1996 as an effort to ease the impact of economic sanctions on civilians after the United Nations imposed them on Iraq in 1990. Although the United Nations pressed Iraq to allow banks other than BNP Paribas to be the primary repository for billions of dollars in oil revenue, Iraq successfully insisted that BNP Paribas remain the sole caretaker of the program’s escrow account

.
Oil scandal billionaire tells French court of bribes
Iraqi-born Briton describes huge kickbacks
Paul Webster and Martin Bright in Paris
Wednesday May 7, 2003
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,950522,00.html

An Iraqi born British billionaire told a French court yesterday how he had paid millions of pounds in kickbacks to French oil executives.
Nadhmi Auchi, 65, reputedly Britain’s seventh richest man, is one of 37 company administrators and business partners accused of being involved in France’s biggest postwar financial scandal in which the oil firm, now TotalFinaElf, allegedly paid out huge sums in bribes and backhanders to expand its empire.

April 18, 2003
Oil, Food and a Whole Lot of Questions
By CLAUDIA ROSETT
New York Times

As for the program’s vast bank accounts, the public is told only that letters of credit are issued by a French bank, BNP Paribas. Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq, entitled to goods funded by 13 percent of the program’s revenues, have been trying for some time to find out how much interest they are going to receive on $4 billion in relief they are still owed. The United Nations treasurer told me that that no outside party, not even the Kurds, gets access to those figures.

Then there is the program’s compensation commission, which is supposed to dole out 25 percent of all oil for food proceeds to people and companies harmed by Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It has so far dispensed $17.5 billion and approved a further $26.2 billion. Who decides on compensation claims? Commission members are picked from a “register of experts” supplied by Mr. Annan. One staff member told me that that this register cannot be released because it is “not public.” The identities of the individual claimants are, of course, “confidential.”

So oil for food scammers were basically laundering funds back into the USA for propping up politicans and running land flips. Let’s look a bit closer at relief for the credit bubble now!
http://boards.biography.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=177454

Wingers from the boards who maintained copies of those links are due a schadenfreude overdose.

Now look at the Iraqi National Congress/London nexus of political and parliamentary hacks:

“Gordon is sitting pretty with the media right now, which means the Brown regime can get away with being equally as politically corrupt as Blair ever was, but with hardly anyone noticing.

Item one: Brown took a leaf out of the Karl Rove playbook this week and did an info dump the day before Parliament recessed; quite a lot of important announcements were made all at once, not least the least interesting of which is that the chair of the Guardian media group has been appointed to his fourth government post. (Why don’t they just rename it the Brown Guardian and have done?)

None of these announcements can be questioned in parliament because it’s not sitting and as mentioned the parliamentary reporters are away on holiday so by the time parliament returns events will have overtaken any questions anyway.

Nod, nod, wink wink, say no more.

Item two: Leader of the House and Secretary of State Harriet Harman also tried the same trick in the Commons, waiting until the very last moment to try and outrageously push through the appointment of the odious Keith Vaz as chair of the Home Affairs Select committee, the supposedly independent, cross-party parliamentary body which oversees all executive activity in prisons, terrorism, policing, community cohesion and so on.

It’s hard to overestimate the potential power that the Chair of a truly independent Home Affairs select committee could have to hold a rampant executive to account - so of course Brown seeks to decapitate it by disregarding the constitution and getting one cabinet puppet to interfere in another branch of government and appoint another puppet as committee chair. Simon Carr in the Independent:”
{…]

…may we express some post-honeymoon skepticism about the PM’s assertions on the value of an independent Commons as well. He doesn’t believe anything of the sort.

As a result, Harriet Harman had great lumps torn out of her on the floor of the House. There was that, at least.

She had suspended Standing Orders in order to appoint Keith Vaz as the new member of the Home Affairs Select Committee (and, under the whips’ instructions, to be the next chair of it).

The skeptical conclusion hooks up Keith Vaz, the Czar of oversight review for British PM, to the same international con man and outstanding warrant man who contests extradition to other EU nations. Keith Vaz connects directly back to our scandal via Rezko’s man for international finance.

Keith Vaz was also a director of the company General Mediterranean Holdings’ owned by the Anglo-Iraqi billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, who had in the past hired British politicians Lord David Steel and Lord Norman Lamont as directors. Vaz resigned his post as director when he became Minister for Europe, but it was later discovered that he had remained in contact with Auchi and had made inquiries on his behalf over a French extradition warrant, Auchi even calling Vaz at home to ask the minister for advice.

http://www.cloggie.org/proggold/2007/07/page/2/
Tony Blair, George Bush, Barack Obama, accidental cowboys playing international call boys to the same financier crew.

Perhaps Rep.Conyers is ready top review the Downing Minutes.

What about Sen.Rockefeller’s Phase II report?

Have the British learned anymore about significant quantities of anything being trafficked internationally, like laundered money from nine billion dollars that went missing in Iraq?

Perhaps Obama will want to ask Rezko about his financier Auchi and the man’s role in supplying arms for genocide in the Sudan:

Paging Alan

Comments Off Posted in ROPMA by Andrew Ian Dodge on June 8th, 2007

The little-known Anglo-Arab Organisation claims to promote a better understanding between Britain and the Arab world. Its president, Nadhmi Auchi, recently met with the genocidal President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, and invited him to come and visit Britain. Bashir accepted.

This may come as something of a shock to one of the AAO’s patrons, Conservative shadow secretary of state for transport, Alan Duncan. Only a month ago he signed an early day motion on Sudan Divestment, which campaigns to end global financial support for the Sudanese government. Seems like grammar schools aren’t the only thing that the Tories are in a state of confusion over.

Via: Popbitch.

Do arms finanicers “worship an awesome god,” too?

The Pentagon has asked the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad to cancel three contracts for Iraqi cell phone networks, worth about $500 million annually, citing fraud and the companies’ links to an Iraqi-born Briton with ties to Saddam Hussein. According to the Washington Times, “the companies are suspected of rigging the bids for the cell phone contracts in favor of Nadhmi Auchi, who owns part of Orascom and a controlling interest in the bank BNP Paribas, which ‘is the French bank selected by Saddam Hussein to run the Oil for Food program.’”

posted at 7:14 AM by GS(he linked to the Washington Times, front page, from the 06/20/2004 blog date).
pondblog.blogspot.com

People were making some connections on these campaign characters from day one of the political season, including this lady:

(Has anyone investigated Chicago Obama’s connections to Tony Rezko and Nadhmi Auchi? Sometimes ya gotta wonder which foreign power brokers pay who to help bring about the new world the billionaires are paid to bring about. But - I guess the campaign laws are too severe for anyone to do anything illegal, right?)

http://kateablog.blogspot.com/2008/01/huckabama-tv.html

She can speak with some gravitas perspecitve:

Mother of five (four in military uniform including daughter-in-law). Grandmother of seven. Central America (under Reagan/Bush) - Been there, done that. When I was 17 it was a very good year for small town girls….

The international financier Rezko hooked up with is seriously bad news.

Suspected money man for the October surprise.

Iran/Contra smuggler.

Oil for Food profiteer.

Bribed members of Parliament and Blair’s Ministry.

PNB Barabas, the bank that Rezko financier Auchi dealt with in Oil for Food for Kurdistan(owing $4 billion in relief plus interest), is being rumored to aim for a buyout of rival bank Society Generale after one employee supposedly swapped out 7.1 billion in trading schemes from the rival investment bank.

Two of France’s top three banks merging, billions in euros gone(wire reports), and Sarkozy a good friend of GWB following him around the Mid East. Tagging on Dubya’s recent visit to seal the deal on several major arms and aero defense transactions.(h/t nur-al)

IMO, Sen.Obama messed up a lot, didn’t see or heed the full scope of it, and Sen.Kennedy is siding with him to help retain any political future for the young man.

Ted can take the political lumps, he’s done as much to help keep Sen.Kerry viable nationally in a past race. That doesn’t mean I think Sen.Obama should get the nod, too many policy differences at this time in his career.

A lot of this is going on, the GOP has been using this tactic a lot, the Leung fundraising scandal is but one example. They tried to taint the Clintons, yet the woman married a former diplomat and attended Dubya’s inauguration at the VIP section in 2000. Double agent mole, possibly connected to the Washington Times owner’s financial network in a big way as well.

Sen.Kennedy is basically taking a round for the youngster, he’s sparring at this time, very new to this level. He’s been through tougher things and can mentor Barack, who indeed may need a father figure to help him redetermine his priorities and focus.

Potential alone doesn’t make you a heavyweight champ.

It’s admirable that Kennedy is doing this, and disappointing for Obama, it doesn’t mean his political days are over. If he were to do this right he’d go right back to the European affairs subcommittee where he Chairs and right the wrongs this Rezko creep has tried to partake in, he’d earn redemption. Rezko influenced the man through buying out oversight for laissez-faire profitmaking at a good young man’s expense. This wasn’t just Sen. Barack Obama, big names in the Senate on both sides sit alongside him in Foreign Affairs, and private interests were more than willing to let someone else be a patsy.

Look at the position he was put in. Dwindling revenues from billionaire tax cuts put a young office holder in a position that he had to find ways of maintaining capital flow in a huge business town. Outside interests ready to buy up the compacted market line up with instant liquid and assets. People put off tightening the belt through many means at that level of politics, if the Congress doesn’t the local Governor will(thats who these bad players were first working with).

He still has a chance to win things over the right way. The Bull market isn’t all about bull. Nothing can shape your political outlook like the realization that you can come back and win one for the underdogs.

I’d certainly cheer him on then, join him in the fight. The true measure of power isn’t how many you bring down, it’s how many you help make the most of their effort alongside you. The ability to make powerful allies out of rivals or opponents is what great leaders can do.

IMO great individuals can’t even get this done, it’s a team effort. Establishing a plurality of assets within the diplomatic ranks at home and abroad. The true powerbrokers are actually decentralized, as they act across international lines. It isn’t about telling one person to go and do it, or else we’d be winning the unilateral follies of ambition that we now are quagmired in.

It’s about developing support from multiple points, and having those points help provide leverage. Obama’s still thinking he has to be in the superstar mode. He could do the team approach, let others take the initial heat, and still arrive at the same point, in time.

That said, a lot of this in Fitz’s hands now. Let’s hope this is just a learning experience for him at limited expense to Americans everywhere, including himself.

Keith has Sen.Kennedy saying Barack was against the war.

I see Obama making statements against not fighting a “smart war” at the time. He did say we should unilateral force.

Yet Sen.Kennedy(voted in support of AUMF) assures me Obama opposed it.

In October 2002, Obama told an anti-war rally in Chicago: “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war … I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.”

So, judging by his votes in the Senate, we can assume he’s convinced we’re fighting Iraq and Afghanistan smartly, otherwise he’d oppose it.

He can hold the vote against anyone else(one person voted against it on record in both Legislative bodies, and 2 Senator, 10 Reps. who voted present).

To do so he’d have to have voted against the ‘dumb war’ funding Bush is waging. That would be political suicide with soldiers held hostage by Bush policy.

Didn’t Colin Powell assure Obama that he’d fight the war smartly?

I take umbrage at the notion he opposed the war, he was actually neutral.

If Obama childishly turned his back on Senator Clinton, while she was graciously shaking hands with the man who had just endorsed her opponent, then it was all Bill Clinton’s fault. Because everything is Bill Clinton’s fault. Unless it’s Hillary fault. Media has hated the Clintons for years and most of the liberal blogs have trotted right along behind them. Zsa Zsa Huffington headlines every negative thing that anyone, anywhere says about the Clintons and fawns over Obama like a love-sick schoolgirl.

One thing all those Clinton haters might want to think about is that hate, unlike love, is catching. And spewing hate at someone we respect and admire nonstop in order to advance your candidate will backfire. I will vote Green if Obama is the candidate. Mr. Hope-A-Dope never impressed me and now his surrogates and supporters have enraged me. Not smart to alienate voters you might need later, is it?

When Barack Obama was a state legislator running for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2003 opposition to the war in Iraq was extremely popular in African American communities and among the progressive voters he needed in order to win. Brother Obama was on the case, doing what he had to do to sew up that vote early, showing up at local antiwar meetings and rallies, and making speeches like the one opposing “a dumb war” which is now trotted out as evidence of his fervent and prescient antiwar stand.

Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, and by late May declared “mission accomplished” and victory in “the battle of Iraq” from the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. With the president riding high in national polls, this reporter checked Obama’s campaign web site and noted that all the evidence of and references to candidate Obama’s prior opposition to the invasion of Iraq had been deleted. The visionary Barack Obama appeared to be leaning rightward with the prevailing wind, distancing himself from his prior opposition to the war.

After calls to Obama’s campaign office yielded no satisfactory answers, we published an article in the June 5, 2003 issue of Black Commentator effectively calling Barack Obama out. We drew attention to the disappearance of any indication that U.S. Senate candidate Obama opposed the Iraq war at all from his web site and public statements. We noted with consternation that the Democratic Leadership Council, the right wing Trojan Horse inside the Democratic party, had apparently vetted and approved Obama, naming him as one of its “100 to Watch” that season. This is what real journalists are supposed to do — fact check candidates, investigate the facts, tell the truth to audiences and hold the little clay feet of politicians and corporations to the fire.

Facing the possible erosion of his base among progressive Democrats in Illinois, Obama contacted us. We printed his response in Black Commentator’s June 19 issue and queried the candidate on three “bright line” issues that clearly distinguish between corporate-funded DLC Democrats and authentic progressives. We concluded the dialog by printing Obama’s response on June 26, 2003. For the convenience of our readers in 2007, all three of these articles can be found here.
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=468&Itemid=34
Four years after senatorial candidate Barack Obama had to be summoned back into open opposition to the war in Iraq, scant weeks after his admission that he would not bring the troops home before the end of 2013, and in the face of dozens of public statements between 2003 and the present advocating an extra hundred thousand bodies to the Army and Marines, a higher Pentagon budget than even Bush is asking for, and the bombing of Iran and Pakistan, history has been rewritten to make Obama an early, consistent and principled voice for peace. This history is written, of course, by the same media that sold us the lies which enabled the war to begin with.

http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/12/388346.html
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
The man is quite impassioned about the topic. unfortunately he doesn’t cross link his items, you can can still google most of the phrases up.

He’s got some amazing insight to Obama, as a the hopeful future triangulator in chief.

He is pretty much diagnosing Obama as a DLC amnesiac.

He quotes DLC literature, which mirrors Obama’s own approach, though Barack later issued a disclaimer directly to the writer.

Barack Obama is listed in the DLC/New Democrats directory of local elected officials, and was featured in its 100 Democratic Leaders to Watch in 2003. It would be a shame if he is in the process of becoming “ideologically freed” from the opinions of the African American and other Democrats whose votes he needs to win.

Here is the insight of the DLC:

The DLC/New Democrat position is identical to that of the White House, “free” and scornful of all opposition voices. Here we have it the words of DLC founder Al From.

” … Democrats must overcome both their own and the opposition’s partisan instincts, and act in the national interest. The president’s decision to prosecute this war without explicit authorization from the United Nations was a close call, but it was the right call.
” … Iraq is clearly involved in both the quest for weapons of mass destruction and in fomenting anti-Western terrorism, whether or not there are direct links between Baghdad and Al Qaeda. The risks of war are eclipsed by the risk of tolerating a conjunction between terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, in a country ruled by a bitter enemy of America, and in the most volatile region of the world.”

The articles occur after the war, and aren’t really filled with strident objections to the war, based on contact with his office.

There are several phases of policy he seems to have adhered, falling prey to the mission accomplished state in removing the reference then from his website.

Keep in mind this is a writer with a background of political activism, opposition to conflict, and personal involvement with voter registration.

He has some very good background on Obama, who helped Carol Moseley get to the Senate, and he also helped Bill Clinton with a ‘92 Presidential campaign with his efforts in that state.

I’m pretty confident if you read that you’ll confirm your previous belief for or against, since he’s done policy tightwires across dual narratives.

The writing is quite good, an impassioned skeptic is the best measure of things. He’s got every reason to want to believe in the energy and enthusiasm, and still tempers this with a critical lens.

It would be nice to see his role in media elevated in any case, maybe visits to his site will help that. His opinion now would also be valued in regards to how it has or has not changed past his 2008 posting of these archives.

His concerns for the candidate may be mirrored elsewhere.

On the pro-Obama blogs, the interpretation is that he had already turned away and did not see Hillary’s outstretched hand.

Meanwhile, the news tonight is going to be of a Hillary win in Florida. She is going to spin this as significant, and I wonder whether it will dissipate some of Obama’s S. Carolina/Teddy momentum.

Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Chicago), perhaps Obama’s most prominent supporter among local elected officials, knows well the power of passion in the political process.

You think perhaps Bill Clinton was alluding to such a connection, that the energy and some of the persons who helped him(Jackson) win there, were still in play for that state when Sen.Obama won? That his son Jesse L. Jackson Jr. often works with matters in Illinois State from the Rep. to Sen. perspective for their offices in the US Congress?

How many of the reporters were familiar enough with the background to say so?

Perhaps Chicago papers could note it, but there’s so much trouble around Rezko that there’s no room for other topics up front.

Florida is interesting because you cannot run commercials there thanks to the DLC/DNC.

The critic above notes Sen.Obama’s careful dual existence for DLC and not-DLC, how can he obligate both?

He’s buying national commercials in violation of understandings now as well to reach the state.

For Florida you have to be in the state, making appearance that will generate publicity. Can’t just saturate it, you have got to know the tack of the political map.

Sen.Kennedy can help there for certain but this should be where Sen.Clinton can separate based on her organization.

Susan,

I counted the word freedom eight times. Hic!

Mr. Murder,

It wouldn’t surprise me if Auchi has ties to Marc Rich. Follow the breadcrumbs.

Sorry to be OT, that is the daily Obama trashing so most of you might not want to read this because there is no Obama dirt in it and also you think here comes that crazy ass Bill Keyes with more gloom and doom, but amazingly what follows will not be a single word by me but it sums up in an amazing way a totally new take on what, as the writer calls it, Bush extremism.

Anyway I am tired of fighting and trying to make a points about what I feel are the most important issues of the day on this blog, when this blog has indeed turned into what the first poster called it,

a bizarre, quasi-tabloid, freakishly obsessive anti-Obama web site.

because I am not going to lower myself into the fracas of this useless daily Obama trashing.

Therefore this may be my last post unless something changes. I may read here occasionaly to see what CEE, hoosier hoops, teakwoodkite and others are saying but it well may they will go somewhere else as
well.

So to paraphrase Tricky Dick you may still have Obama around to kick but you wont have ol crazy gloom and doom Bill Keyes.

We’re all low-information voters, now. occasion
by Kagro X
Mon Jan 28, 2008 at 04:27:41 PM PST

One of the most popular self-conceptions of avid
blog readers is that we’re “high-informationvoters,” that is, that we immerse ourselves in the
day-to-day political developments reported in the

traditional media, as well as the discussion and
analysis that takes place in the blogosphere. We
actively make ourselves aware of what’s happening in
the political world, and make our voting decisions
based on our own internal analyses of this
tremendous volume and flow of information.

When it comes to evaluating the legacy of the George
W. Bush “administration,” for instance, we’re all
too well aware of the dark record, even if the
traditional media have been less than dogged in its
daily pursuit of the accumulated weight of Bush’s
departures from our traditional understandings of
the constitutional order and that nebulous metric,
“The American Way.”
Consider what we’ve witnessed over the years:

the emergence of the use of torture

secret prisons

indefinite detention

the denial of habeas corpus

warrantless eavesdropping

illegal domestic spying

the politicization of the administration of criminal
justice and of civil rights

the claimed unilateral nullification of enacted
legislation

the claim that the failure by the president to
comply with Executive Orders amounts to a secret and
unwritten revocation or revision of such orders

dictation of the terms of legislation by the
president to Congress

dictation of the terms of appropriations bills
(heretofore known as the “power of the purse” by the
president to Congress

the declaration that federal judges are incompetent
to rule on questions touching on “national security”

the refusal of the “unitary executive” to permit the
other branches to test its claims of “executive
privilege”

the refusal of the Justice Department to prosecute
contempt of Congress charges against executive
branch officials

the staggering increase in the frequency of use of
the “state secrets” privilege to block access to the
courts

the systematic suppression of scientific evidence
regarding “administration” policies through the
manipulation of administrative procedure

And of course, much, much more that I’m probably
missing in my off the cuff recitation.

But the point of that recitation is this: the
current “administration’s” penchant for secrecy and
for pushing all limits on the separation of powers
in every conceivable direction to the breaking point
has made us all low-information voters, no matter
how hard we try to stay current with the news.

How so? Well, in November of this year, we’ll all be
asked to cast our ballots to elect the 44th
President of the United States, as well as the new
111th Congress. And while we’ve all diligently
studied the issues, candidate positions and other
information available, what we don’t know — and it
has been the design of the Bush “administration” not
to let us know — is the actual job descriptions for
the offices we’ll be asked to help fill in November.

Is Barack Obama the best person for the job? Hillary
Clinton? John Edwards? Or for that matter, Mitt
Romney or John McCain? How about Nancy Pelosi? Dan
Mark Pera? [correction: 3 a.m. writing -- Mark Pera,
who's running against incumbent Blue Dog Dem Dan
Lipinski in IL-03] Tom Allen? Mark Warner?

The fact is that the information we have access to
sheds light on what kind of track record and vision
for the future these candidates bring to the table,
but may no longer be accurate indicators of what
they’ll be able to do if they win election.

Are the people we elect to Congress going to have
the “power of the purse?”

Is the president we elect going to have the power to
unilaterally nullify enacted law?

Will the 111th Congress have the “subpoena power” we
were assured that the 110th would have, but didn’t?

That’s has been the design of the Bush
“administration.” To leave us with less
understanding and less information about how our
government works. All the better to run roughshod
over us, while we reel in the confusion and
disbelief.

This is a giant step backwards from the
progressive gains of the post-Watergate era.

The era that brought us the Federal Elections Commission to combat the influence of unregulated, secret campaign slush funds.

The era that brought us FISA, to combat
the use of the national security apparatus to
monitor, cow and intimidate the domestic political
opposition.

The era that brought us the War Powers
Act (which admittedly might not be considered
properly “post-Watergate,” depending on how you
define that), to combat the limitless and unilateral
use of presidential authority to commit our troops
to combat and keep them there in the face of
overwhelming political opposition.

But that’s where the Bush “administration’s”
extremism has left us. Instead of asking whether one
or another of the candidates is the best person for
the job, we have to step much further back, and ask,
“what’s the job?”

The extent of that damage is almost beyond
comprehension.

So knowing Marc Rich all of a year equals Rezko’s seventeen years?

Was Marc Rich the number one contributor to the Clintons?

Obama said he knew Rezko for “five hours” and that was it. That’s not even a good liar. He admits later he knew the man longer.

[...] of his use of the sexually charged word, “scores,” against a woman now! OMG! (See comments here for [...]

Bill:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore benefit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.

Lao Tzu.

I’m not buyin’ it… for me the important story of the evening was Sen. Clinton giving a standing ovation to Bush’s lie that the surge was a success. Who is she kidding?

I’d support hillary. Love her smile and her confidence. She always has a positive attitude and that is what makes her outstanding. Everytime I signed in the site ***BlackCentury.com*** and some men were talking her and said she is attractive.