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What Has Obama Done?

Yet another video that the Republicans are rejoicing over while Independents are gasping:

  • k in the northwest

    Ok so WHY is this guy being voted in.
    Futhermore since when did the presumptive nominee become the head of the DNC? I’m still trying to figure out why he is doing what he is doing with the DNC when its not official yet?

    Just out of curiosity, Has anyone heard anything about Hillary?

    • HARP

      Hopefully Hillary is taking a much deserved rest and I kinda would like to see her develop laryngitis until Nov 4.

      • James

        What a great idea! LOL
        I agree.

        • Dakinikat

          I can tell you one thing he hasn’t been doing. That would be his job. Notice all the NOT VOTING. In his senate record here:

          http://obama.senate.gov/votes/

      • AF catfish

        Yes Hillary stay out of the way while he self-destructs.

        She being in the scene allows Obama to divert attention from himself.

      • Mandelay

        I had read somewhere last week that plans are afoot for coordinated appearances with the two of them together “touring” various spots around the country. Can you imagine them using her to introduce him and then he takes the mike and proceeds to charm us all into voting for him because, as the DNC sees it, we have no other choice?

        • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

          Won’t happen. The obama campaign hates hates hates Hillary and want her and bill to disappear and forever be remembered as the racist president and his racist wife.

          I bet they are going to do what Al Gore did in 2000, reject clintons help & involvement and lose the election.

          • Loyal Democrat

            Hillary and Barack like each other a lot more than you think.
            http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1811832,00.html

            • GoHillary

              Don’t feed the troll

            • MaryPat

              No. And Michelle absolutely, positively hates Hillary. That’s key.

              This video is 58 seconds of pure gold. In view of current gas prices, Barry’s vote on Cheney’s oil bill is especially radioactive.

              Get this kind of info out to Independent voters and Barry’s inexperienced, thin-skinned goose is cooked.

            • Mary

              It doesn’t matter.

              Obama can’t afford to use the Clintons now, after he and his campaign characterized them as vicious racists who were looking for Obama to be assassinated (all a lie, by the way).

              Obama made that choice to win the primary.

              He has to live with the consequences of neither Clinton being willing to help him.

              Tough titty. Deal with it.

              • Mandelay

                :-) Haven’t heard “tough titty” since I played on the streets of NY’s Little Italy when I was a kid. Thanks for the memory!

            • bert

              I would not cite Joe Klein. He has lost all crediblity with me. He is a Bush cheerleader and apologist. He is an idiot who has no moral compass. He will say and do what ever is expedient for Joe.

    • Joe Smith

      The DNC has no money. He bought the DNC.

      • Mary

        Read an article yesterday that said the RNC has $40 million for the general election.

        The DNC only has $4 million, and can’t meet the convention payments.

        It appears that Dean and Brazille pissed off more Democrats than even they knew at the time.

        • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

          The DNC is currently $$ millions in the hole… and counting…

          Now that Obama has the nomination, his contributors are going bye bye… Say, were those contributors Republicans tring to oust Hillary?

          When the DNC moves to Chicago it will be renamed the BNC.

          The DLC, http://www.dlc.org/, will become the real DNC.

          • Mary

            Maybe Rezko and Auchi and Wright and Khalidi and Alsamarrae and Pleger and Jesse Jackson Jr and James Clyburn and John Conyers can finance the DNC now.

            Donna Brazille told us “We don’t NEED those ole white blue collar workers anymore to win.”

            Well, ok. Let the Congressional Black Caucus and RBC pay those bills.

        • bert

          And I hear McCain’s fund raising is going better than expected. Supposedly he raised 10 mill in May.

          • Mary

            YEP.

            And some of Hillary’s biggest Jewish contributors moved to McCain, too.

    • Ellen

      the fact is, he has very similar records in the senate to Hillary – in 7 years, only 10 of her sponsored or co-sponsored bills have been enacted. the only record where Obama’s is worse than Hillary is the number of ‘missed’ votes…which his is exceedingly poor in relation to his peers and hers is very poor in relation to her peers.

      • http://deleted TheViking

        “His peers”? “Her peers”?

        They have different peers?

        What peers would they be then?

        I thought they were supposed to have the same peers since they were supposed to be of the same party, no?

  • kat in your hat

    Good video.

    I can’t believe Obama was just in the U.S. Senate for one year before he announced his candidacy.

    This whole thing is fixed. Obama is a fraud.

    Just Say No Deal.
    PUMA!

  • POdVet

    It needs the twilight zone theme song playing in the background.

    Those you see following the Obamessiah are not Democrats, though the species may try to look similar. They are in fact nothing but JACKASSES!
    P.U.M.A.

  • Mandelay

    And what did he do in the Illinois State Senate, besides putting is name on other people’s bills and managing to lose/destroy/bury — who knows? — his records of that time in office at the state level? Barack Obama’s number one job as an elected official has been to cover his tracks. Once in awhile, on a long road where many bodies are buried, a hand or a foot shoves its way up through the dirt and we get to meet a Tony Rezko, or a Jeremiah Wright, or a Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, or this rich guy pal of Saddam Hussein, the mysterious Mr. Auchi. But with so much time in public office and so little to show for it, yet so many powerful backers/friends, Barack must have been very busy in the power kitchen, stirring up a nice big batch of Quid Pro Quo for his powerful playmates. And this is why they back him … so he’ll get more for them from the big, juicy White House honey pot. The only way to keep this corrupt candidate out of the White House is to find a way to make your vote count in November — vote against the Democratic Party in November and prevent Obama from taking office as POTUS… or watch your country fed to the wolves as you continue to pay taxes to fund his agenda. It’s more important than any other issue on the table.

    • AF catfish

      Obama’s state leg accomplisments were all in one year.

      It’s a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what’s interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

      [snip]

      Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

      “I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen,” State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. “Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

      [snip]

      During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama’s stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

      • Mandelay

        Yes, you can read all about his experiences in this article, published in February in the Houston Press. It’s been visited many times and copied and pasted all over the place, but here it is again, Barack Obama in all his “legislative glory.” (see below) You can google this article by it’s title and see photos of the cast of characters with fitting captions. Obama’s “press corps” dutifully did not pick up the story so there’s no need for the “smear squad” to attack the author. But with witnesses in the Illinois State Senate who backed up this story, Obama can’t deny it either. What a shameful puppy he is.

        (begin quote)Barack Obama and Me
        It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
        By Todd Spivak
        published: February 28, 2008

        It’s not quite eight in the morning and Barack Obama is on the phone screaming at me. He liked the story I wrote about him a couple weeks ago, but not this garbage.
        Months earlier, a reporter friend told me she overheard Obama call me an asshole at a political fund-raiser. Now here he is blasting me from hundreds of miles away for a story that just went online but hasn’t yet hit local newsstands.

        It’s the first time I ever heard him yell, and I’m trembling as I set down the phone. I sit frozen at my desk for several minutes, stunned.

        This is before Obama Girl, before the secret service detail, before he becomes a best-selling author. His book Dreams From My Father has been out of print for years.

        I often see Obama smoking cigarettes on brisk Chicago mornings in front of his condominium high-rise along Lake Michigan, or getting his hair buzzed at the corner barbershop on 53rd and Harper in his Hyde Park neighborhood.

        This is before he becomes a U.S. senator, before Oprah starts stumping for him, before he positions himself to become the country’s first black president.

        He is just a rank-and-file state senator in Illinois and I work for a string of small, scrappy newspapers there.
        _____________________

        The other day, while stuck in traffic on Houston’s Southwest Freeway, I was flipping through right-wing rants on AM radio. Dennis Praeger was railing against Michelle Obama for her clumsy comment on being proud of her country for the first time.

        Praeger went on to call her husband a blank slate. There’s no record to look at, he complained, unless you lived in Barack Obama’s old state Senate district.

        Well, I lived and worked in that district for three years — nearly half Obama’s tenure in the Illinois Legislature. D-13, the district was called, and it spanned a large swath of the city’s poor, black, crime- ridden South Side.

        It was 2000 and I was a young, hungry reporter at the Hyde Park Herald and Lakefront Outlook community newspapers earning $19,000 a year covering politics and crime.

        I talked with Obama on a regular basis — a couple times a month, at least. I’d ask him about his campaign-finance reports, legislation he was sponsoring and various local issues. He wrote an occasional column published in our papers. It ran with a headshot that made him look about 14 years old.

        Spinning through my old Rolodex, I see that I had two cell phone numbers for Obama. Both have since been disconnected.

        I also had cell phone numbers for Jesse Jackson, his son Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., and David Axelrod, who now serves as Obama’s senior presidential campaign adviser.

        Axelrod, too, had begun his journalism career at the Hyde Park Herald before joining the Chicago Tribune as a political reporter then starting a political consulting firm. Another Hyde Park Herald alum was Seymour Hersh, the legendary investigative reporter who uncovered the My Lai massacre for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal for The New Yorker.

        My view of Obama then wasn’t all that different from the image he projects now. He was smart, confident, charismatic and liberal. One thing I can say is, I never heard him launch into the preacher-man voice he now employs during speeches. He sounded vanilla, and activists in his mostly black district often chided him for it.

        I was 25 and had no problem interviewing big-wig politicians. But I always had to steel my nerves when calling Obama. His intelligence was intimidating, and my hands inevitably shook with sweat.

        It was serendipity that I ever came to know Obama at all. Looking back, I think of it as a Forrest Gump moment: History was unfolding and I was at the center of it, clueless. It’s a huge bummer to me that I never taped our interviews.

        I moved to Chicago from the East Coast after a bad breakup. I had just one year of newspaper experience under my belt, working the courts beat for a small Vermont daily.

        I picked Chicago because I had friends there. Plus, it was one of the few American cities left with two competing dailies, upping my chances of landing a gig.

        I arrived determined to work for one of the big papers. I once spent an entire day dressed up in my only suit and tie — the one I wore to my brother’s wedding, where I ripped a hole in the knee while dancing with my niece — and stood, résumé in hand, outside the newsroom at the dumpy old Chicago Sun-Times building.

        Columnist Neil Steinberg was gracious enough to accept my folder and even gave me his home number to call later that night. Unimpressed by my clips, Steinberg said most new recruits graduated from top journalism schools such as Northwestern or Columbia — or their mommies or daddies worked at the paper or knew somebody who did.

        His advice: To work in Chicago, you have to leave Chicago. Go prove yourself someplace else, kid.

        I had a friend at one of the local journalism schools who let me tag along for a school-sponsored tour of the Chicago Tribune building. After the tour, page-two columnist John Kass told us about how he got picked up by the Tribune while in his early 20s after breaking a big story at a little South Side paper.

        I spent three months sleeping on a friend’s floor on the city’s South Side. He was a broke grad student who had earned a mostly free ride at the University of Chicago, working toward a Ph.D. in comparative literature. His studio apartment in Hyde Park was tiny.

        We joked that the only way I could stretch my legs at night was to open the oven in the kitchen. It was like the old blues lyric, “I got a gal she’s long and tall, sleeps in the kitchen with her feet in the hall.”

        Obama, who then earned about $50,000 a year as a rookie state senator, lived in a small condo just two blocks away. I had never met or even seen his wife Michelle, though I’d heard she was employed at University of Chicago Hospitals. Their second daughter Natasha had not yet been born.

        Every day, I walked past the Hyde Park Herald office, set upstairs from Obama’s barbershop. The newspaper box out front said all I needed to know. It was dented, covered in graffiti and broken. The thing ate your two quarters and offered nothing in return.

        I didn’t want to work there. My aspirations were bigger than that.

        Desperate, I finally swallowed my pride, climbed the steep, smelly staircase and submitted my shamefully thin résumé to the receptionist. To my dismay, the editor called later that afternoon with a job offer.
        _____________________

        Chris Matthews, the MSNBC political pundit, recently grilled Texas State Senator Kirk Watson for supporting Obama despite knowing nothing about the candidate’s legislative record.

        “Can you name any — can you name anything he’s accomplished?” Matthews pressed.

        “No,” Watson, whose district includes Austin, finally admitted. “I’m not gonna be able to do that.”

        “Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it?” Matthews said.

        Hillary Clinton recalled the incident with a chuckle during last Thursday’s debate at the University of Texas.

        When asked about his legislative record, Obama rattles off several bills he sponsored as an Illinois lawmaker.

        He expanded children’s health insurance; made the state Earned Income Tax Credit refundable for low-income families; required public bodies to tape closed-door meetings to make government more transparent; and required police to videotape interrogations of homicide suspects.

        And the list goes on.

        It’s a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what’s interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

        Republicans controlled the Illinois General Assembly for six years of Obama’s seven-year tenure. Each session, Obama backed legislation that went nowhere; bill after bill died in committee. During those six years, Obama, too, would have had difficulty naming any legislative achievements.

        Then, in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor’s office as well as both legislative chambers.

        The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James “Pate” Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor.

        Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama’s. He became Obama’s ­kingmaker.

        Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city’s most popular black call-in radio program.

        I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

        “He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.’”

        “Oh, you are? Who might that be?”

        “Barack Obama.”

        Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

        “I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen,” State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. “Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

        “I don’t consider it bill jacking,” Hendon told me. “But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.”

        During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama’s stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

        It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics — and he couldn’t have done it without Jones.

        Before Obama ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, he was virtually unknown even in his own state. Polls showed fewer than 20 percent of Illinois voters had ever heard of Barack Obama.

        Jones further helped raise Obama’s profile by having him craft legislation addressing the day-to-day tragedies that dominated local news headlines.

        For instance. Obama sponsored a bill banning the use of the diet supplement ephedra, which killed a Northwestern University football player, and another one preventing the use of pepper spray or pyrotechnics in nightclubs in the wake of the deaths of 21 people during a stampede at a Chicago nightclub. Both stories had received national attention and extensive local coverage.

        I spoke to Jones earlier this week and he confirmed his conversation with Kelley, adding that he gave Obama the legislation because he believed in Obama’s ability to negotiate with Democrats and Republicans on divisive issues.

        So how has Obama repaid Jones?

        Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones’s Senate district.

        Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view on pork-barrel spending.

        I’ll never forget what he said:

        “Some call it pork; I call it steak.”
        _____________________

        In Hyde Park, I eventually moved into a room a few blocks from the newspaper offices. For $150 a month, I lived in a former servant’s quarters with a closet and a connecting bathroom set just off the kitchen in a dingy apartment occupied by several grad students. My eight-by-eight room fit a mattress on the floor and not much else.

        During those rare moments when I wasn’t working or hanging out with my new girlfriend, I sat on the apartment’s crumbling back deck smoking cigarettes and drinking beer in cans with a very nice but drug-addicted homeless woman who crashed in a sleeping bag on the cement floor below. A couple years later, I wrote her obituary.

        Hyde Park was the most racially integrated neighborhood in a city with a long, tortured history of segregation. Along 53rd Street, the neighborhood’s main commercial corridor, chess players filled the parks, student activists chanted political slogans and women clad in bright colors and elaborate headwraps sang church hymns while strolling the sidewalks.

        I would sometimes sit smoking on the fire escape outside my office and feel like I’d wandered into a Spike Lee film.

        The communities surrounding Hyde Park were predominantly black and impoverished, marked by high crime, boarded-up storefronts and vacant lots. In some residential areas, banks and grocery stores were several miles away.

        On the stump, Obama has frequently invoked his experiences as a community organizer on the Chicago South Side in the early 1990s, when he passed on six-figure salary offers at corporate law firms after graduating from Harvard Law School to direct a massive voter-registration drive.

        But, as a state senator, Obama evaded leadership on a host of critical community issues, from historic preservation to the rapid demolition of nearby public-housing projects, according to many South Siders.

        Harold Lucas, a veteran South Side community organizer who remembers when Obama was “just a big-eared kid fresh out of school,” says he didn’t finally decide to support Obama’s presidential bid until he was actually inside the voting booth on Super Tuesday.

        “I’m not happy about the quality of life in my community,” says Lucas, who now heads a black-heritage tourism business in Chicago. “As a local elected official, he had a primary role in that.”

        In addition to Hyde Park, Obama also represented segments of several South Side neighborhoods home to the nation’s richest African-American cultural history outside of Harlem.

        Before World War II, the adjacent Bronzeville community was known as the “Black Metropolis,” attracting African-American migrants seeking racial equality and economic opportunity from states to the south such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

        Storied jazz clubs such as Gerri’s Palm Tavern regularly hosted Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker and many others. In the postwar era, blues legends Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and B.B. King all regularly gigged in cramped juke joints such as the Checkerboard Lounge.

        When the City of Chicago seized the 70-year-old Gerri’s Palm Tavern by eminent domain in 2001, sparking citywide protests, Obama was silent. And he offered no public comments when the 30-year owner of the Checkerboard Lounge was forced to relocate a couple years later.

        Even in Hyde Park, Obama declined to take a position on a years-long battle waged by hundreds of local community activists fighting against the city’s plan to replace the historic limestone seawall along Lake Michigan — a popular spot to sunbathe and swim — with concrete steps.

        It would be comparable to representing Barton Creek in Austin, and sidestepping any discussion about conservation.

        Obama’s aloofness on key community issues for years frustrated Lucas and many other South Siders. Now they believe he was just afraid of making political enemies or being pigeonholed as a black candidate. Lucas says he has since become an ardent Obama supporter.

        “His campaign has built a momentum of somebody being born to the moment,” Lucas says. “He truly gives the perception that he could possibly pull us all together around being American again. And the hope of that is worth the risk when you look at the other candidates. I mean, you can’t get away from old school when you look at Hillary.”

        Lucas even believes Obama made the right choice by declining PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley’s invitation to speak at this week’s State of the Black Union 2008 conference in New Orleans.

        “Obama can’t bring those issues up if he wants to be elected,” Lucas says. “And that’s the travesty of the situation that we find ourselves in as African-Americans.”

        In the presidential campaign, Obama has been criticized for a shady land deal and other past ties to Tony Rezko, the Chicago real estate developer and ubiquitous political donor who now faces federal charges of attempted extortion and money laundering.

        In a debate held last month before the South Carolina primary, Hillary Clinton charged that Obama had legally represented Rezko “in his slum landlord business in inner-city Chicago.” The issue was turned back on her a few days later when an old picture of a smiling Clinton posing with Rezko surfaced on Drudge Report.

        Though it didn’t make national news, Obama inflamed many residents in his old state Senate district last March when he endorsed controversial Chicago alderman Dorothy Tillman in a runoff election.

        Flamboyant and unpredictable, Tillman is perhaps best known for once pulling a pistol from her purse and brandishing it around at a city council meeting. The ward she represented for 22 years, which included historic Bronzeville, comprised the city’s largest concentration of vacant lots.

        Just three months before Obama made his endorsement, the Lakefront Outlook community newspaper ran a three-part investigative series exposing flagrant crony ism and possible tax-law violations that centered on Tillman and her biggest pet project, a taxpayer-funded cultural center built across the street from her ward office that had been hemorrhaging money since its inception.

        The series won a national George Polk Award, among the most coveted prizes in journalism. Not bad for a 12-page rag with a circulation of 12,000 and no Web site. I had already left the Outlook and had nothing to do with the project.

        In the end, Tillman lost the election despite Obama’s endorsement, which critics said countered his calls for clean government. Obama told the Chicago Tribune that he had backed Tillman because she was an early supporter of his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.

        Many speculate Obama only bothered to weigh in on a paltry city council election during his presidential campaign as a gesture to Chicago’s powerful Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Tillman supporter. Even so, Obama should have remained neutral, says Timuel Black, a historian and City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus who lived in Obama’s state Senate district.

        “That was not a wise decision,” Black says. “It was poor judgment on his part. He was operating like a politician trying to win the next step up.”
        _____________________

        Obama has spent his entire political career trying to win the next step up. Every three years, he has aspired to a more powerful political position.

        He was just 35 when in 1996 he won his first bid for political office. Even many of his staunchest supporters, such as Black, still resent the strong-arm tactics Obama employed to win his seat in the Illinois Legislature.

        Obama hired fellow Harvard Law alum and election law expert Thomas Johnson to challenge the nominating petitions of four other candidates, including the popular incumbent, Alice Palmer, a liberal activist who had held the seat for several years, according to an April 2007 Chicago Tribune report.

        Obama found enough flaws in the petition sheets — to appear on the ballot, candidates needed 757 signatures from registered voters living within the district — to knock off all the other Democratic contenders. He won the seat unopposed.

        “A close examination of Obama’s first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career,” wrote Tribune political reporters David Jackson and Ray Long. “The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.”

        Three years later, in September 1999, Obama was already preparing his first national campaign. He ran for U.S. Congress against veteran incumbent Bobby Rush, a former co-founder of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party.

        Rush painted the largely unknown freshman lawmaker as an out-of-touch elitist, and won the 2000 primary by more than 30 percentage points.

        Three years later, in January 2003, Obama announced his bid for the U.S. Senate, where he cruised to victory thanks to the self-destruction of his top opponents in both the primary and general elections.

        Obama joined a crowded field of seven candidates vying to fill an open Senate seat being vacated by retiring two-term incumbent Peter Fitzgerald. For months, he polled in the middle-of-the-pack behind frontrunner and former securities trader Blair Hull, who spent $30 million of his own fortune on the primary.

        But Hull’s campaign imploded just weeks before the election when his divorce files were unsealed, revealing an ex-wife’s charges of verbal and physical abuse.

        Obama unleashed a barrage of television ads just before the election, when the other candidates had largely depleted their war chests. He won the nomination with 53 percent of the vote.

        In the general election, Obama squared off against another multimillionaire: Jack Ryan, who later dropped out of the race after a judge ordered his divorce files unsealed. The documents revealed that Ryan’s ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, a former Miss Illinois best known for her role as Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager, accused him of trying to coerce her to perform sex acts in public.

        Obama spent several weeks facing no opponent as the Illinois Republican Party exhausted a laundry list of replacement candidates that included former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka. The GOP ended up recruiting two-time failed presidential hopeful Alan Keyes from Maryland to fill the slot.

        Keyes’s strategy to use bombastic rhetoric to attract headlines turned off most voters. Most memorably, he said Jesus would not vote for Obama and that homosexuals, including Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter, participated in “selfish hedonism.”

        In the end, Obama won more than 70 percent of the vote in the most lopsided Senate election in Illinois history and became the fifth African-American to win a seat in the U.S. Senate.

        Three years later, in February 2007, Obama announced his bid for the White House in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, where Abraham Lincoln had made his famous House Divided speech.
        _____________________

        I moved to Springfield in early 2004 to work for the Illinois Times, where I covered Obama’s U.S. Senate bid.

        My first assignment was to profile Obama, who was largely unknown in central Illinois.

        In fact, at that time just four years ago, Obama was still largely unknown even in his own community.

        I followed Obama one wintry morning as he visited several black churches on Chicago’s South Side urging people to vote for him in the upcoming primary. Congregants greeted him with lukewarm applause.

        I noted in my article that one lady sitting in a pew beside me was noticeably impressed with the young man, and asked to borrow my pen. She wrote on her church pamphlet, “Obama, March 16,” then underlined the date.

        Over the years, most of my interviews with Obama were conducted by phone. So it felt good when he immediately recognized me and shouted my name from the end of a long, empty hallway inside the church after his speech.

        After all, I admired the guy — and still do.

        We shook hands and walked outside together. I asked some questions and snapped some pictures before a dark-blue Chevrolet Suburban with tinted windows whisked him off to another congregation less than a mile away. I followed behind in my beat-up Oldsmobile.

        My story ran on the cover of the Illinois Times. The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought it was fluff. Obama’s own public-relations flack could have produced something comparable.

        At the time, the Illinois media had fallen head-over-heels in love with Obama and his squeaky-clean image. “As pedigrees go, there is not a finer one among the Democratic candidates,” the Chicago Tribune gushed in its endorsement.

        All this predated TV pundit Chris Matthews’s more recent comment that Obama’s speeches send chills up his legs.

        “He’s been given a pass,” says Harold Lucas, the community organizer in Chicago. “His career has been such a meteoric rise that he has not had the time to set a record.”

        A week after my profile of Obama was published, I called some of my contacts in the Illinois Legislature. I ran through a list of black Chicago lawmakers who had worked with Obama, and was surprised to learn that many resented him and had supported other candidates in the U.S. Senate election.

        “Anybody but Obama,” the late state Representative Lovana Jones told me at the time.

        State Representative Monique Davis, who attended the same church as Obama and co-sponsored several bills with him, also did not support his candidacy. She complained of feeling overshadowed by Obama.

        “I was snubbed,” Davis told me. “I felt he was shutting me out of history.”

        In a follow-up report published a couple weeks later, I wrote about these disgruntled black legislators and the central role Senate President Emil Jones played in Obama’s revived political life.

        The morning after the story was posted online, I arrived early at my new offices. I hadn’t taken my coat off when the phone rang. It was Obama.

        The article began, “It can be painful to hear Ivy League-bred Barack Obama talk jive.”

        Obama told me he doesn’t speak jive, that he doesn’t say the words “homeboy” or “peeps.”

        It seemed so silly; I thought for sure he was joking. He wasn’t.

        He said the black legislators I cited in the story were off-base, and that they couldn’t have gotten the bills passed without him.

        I started to speak, and he shouted me down.

        He said he liked the other story I wrote.

        I asked if there was anything factually inaccurate about the latest story.

        He repeated that his former colleagues couldn’t have passed the bills without him.

        He asked why I wrote this story, then cut me off when I started to answer.

        He said he should have been given a chance to respond.

        I told him I had requested an interview through his communications director.

        He said I should have called his cell phone.

        I reminded him that he had asked me months ago to stop calling his cell phone due to his busier schedule.

        He said again that I should have called his cell phone.

        Today I no longer have Obama’s cell phone number. I submitted two formal requests to interview Obama for this story through his Web site, but have not heard back. I also e-mailed interview requests to three of his top staffers, but none responded.

        Maybe he’ll call the day after this story runs. I’ll get to the office early just in case. And this time I’ll have my recorder ready.(end quote)

      • Anee

        Then why won’t he produce his records? PRODUCE THE RECORDS!

      • Loyal Democrat

        Nice convenient snips friend. You left out the part where the GOP froze Obama out of any possible accomplishments because they saw him as a serious threat.

        • Mary

          Nonsense, Loyal.

          Obama had lots of opportunities to push strong legislation; he chose to lay low and NOT LEAD so he wouldn’t jeopardize his own political ambitions.

  • Zee

    The sound did not work on this on my machine…and I can view other youtubes….

    • Zee

      Nevermind….if I doubleclick I can hear it at the original source!

  • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

    Citizens for McCain is an organization within the McCain campaign for people who put country before political party and support the candidate for President who has a proven record of bipartisanship.

    I have worked with John McCain for many years in the U.S. Senate and know from experience that he can unite Democrats, Republicans and Independents like no one else in this country. He did it in the United States Senate and he can do it as President of the United States.

    Thank you for your willingness to help me expand this new organization. Together, we will make history.

    Joe Lieberman
    http://citizens.johnmccain.com/

    • Loyal Democrat

      So, I guess this site is an organ of the republican party? Okay, good to know.

      • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

        LAS CRUCES, N.M — Despite not having served in the military himself, Barack Obama used his Memorial Day remarks to speak about his family’s service. “My grandfather marched in Patton’s army, but I cannot know what it is to walk into battle like so many of you,” he told a small group of veterans here.

        And speaking of his typical white grandmother, he said — “My grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line, but I cannot know what it is for a family to sacrifice like so many of yours have.”

        Obama also spoke about his typical white uncle, who was part of the American brigade that helped to liberate Auschwitz. He said the family legend is that, upon returning from war, his uncle spent six months in an attic.

        First lie! — Wow! Very dramatic! The problem is that Auschwitz of course is in Poland. It was liberated by the Red Army on January 27th, 1945. Poland, on most maps is usually placed to the east of Germany, although we may need to investigate the geography textbooks the Obamessiah used as a child.

        The Allies were wrapping up the battle of the bulge in late January of 1945 — the Rhine crossings were still well into the future when Auschwitz was liberated.

        Either Obama’s uncle served in the Red Army, or he’s spinning Clintonesque lies about Auschwitz to sell his government programs. Hey, it’s for a good cause…but it’s not enough for him. It has to be personal. It has to be all about him.

        Second lie! — Obama has no uncles. His mother Anna was an only child, and Obama Sr. had two sisters.

        Oh, it’s not a lie, his campaign says he made a mistake — he just made another gaffe in the growing collection of documented Obama’s gaffes — it was his great-uncle and it was a sub-camp of Buchenwald, but who cares about these little details, right?

        AGAIN? — well, it turns out that he’s told this tale before, in 2002 — except he identifies his typical white grandfather as the liberator.

        “My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.”

        Third lie! — Obama’s grandfather enlisted in June 18, 1942.

        Fourth lie! — In his autobiography, “Dreams of My Father,” Obama states his grandfather never engaged in combat. “Gramps returned from the war never having seen real combat, and the family moved to California, where he enrolled at Berkeley under the GI bill.”

        http://www.theobamafile.com

      • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

        The only organ is the one in your mouth and it has ObamaTool written all over it.

      • Mary

        Loyal, don’t worry about Dems who will vote for McCain.

        Worry about Democrats who won’t vote at all.

        If 10% of those people stay home, Obama LOSES, big time.

        • //Yahoo ALforHill

          That is not true. To stay home is a vote for Obama. Vote for McCain, jerkbama needs two votes to offset one for McCain. Bots want you to stay home. That’s why Brazilla said “to the base, stay home.”

  • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

    His political history in Illinois shows that Obama has proven himself to be a nearly perfect Progressive-Democrat.

    While in the Illinois State Senate, Obama is named Chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee. His distinguished works include passing bill to assist children and adults who cannot afford health insurance; increasing funding for AIDS prevention and care; a law requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes punishable by the death penalty; a law requiring insurance companies to cover routine mammograms; legislation to curb racial profiling.

    Obama opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act four times in Illinois. The Born Alive bill would have prohibited a baby from being born alive but left to die according to the mother’s wishes. Obama opposed this bill not once, twice, or three times, but four times.

    Obama took almost $90,000 in bundled contributions from the Council for a Livable World. The council is a well-known anti-defense organization.

    Obama puts rigid ideology before what’s best for the people of Illinois, and presumably he would do that as President as well. He has on several occasions made public his opposition to the NAFTA trade agreement and his belief that it must be negotiated. All the while thanks to NAFTA, Illinois exports $1.3 billion in agricultural goods to Canada.

    Obama was the only member of the Illinois State Senate to vote against a bill that prohibited early release for sexual predators.

    Obama voted to make a criminal out of a homeowner who was forced to use a gun in his own defense in his own home.

    Obama refused to vote for a bill in the Illinois State Senate that would have increased penalties for drug traffickers.

    Obama voted against making it a criminal offense for convicts on probation or on bail to have contact with a street gang.

    Obama voted against a bill that would have delivered the death penalty to gang members who murder first responders.

    Obama’s record on anti-gang legislation is simple; because gang members are more often people of color, they shouldn’t be singled out for increased attention or special penalties by the law.

    http://www.theobamafile.com

    • WestPalm4Hillary

      Obama’s Opposition to the “Born Alive Infant Protection Act” has not yet become the hot button issue it can be and probably will be.

      If there’s anything that will mobilize the conservative base, it’s a guy who voted and obstructed a bill that would prevent botched late term aborted babies from being kept alive after being born alive.

      His excuse at the time was “Roe v. Wade,” but the bill was passed in the US COngress with overwhelming support from Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, because it was worded to specifically avoid conflicts with Roe v. Wade.

      Obama, who has never appeared as counsel of record on a single case in Illinois – despite his much lauded graduation from Harvard, and despite his claims to Constitutional scholarship – dropped the ball and revealed himself to be an out of touch extremist on this issue.

      • Loyal Democrat

        Um, if I was the McCain campaign I would not be reminding women that Obama is pro-choice and McCain is anti choice. That’s a sure way to cost JSM the election.

        • Mary

          Um, if I was the Obama campaign, I would not be reminding Americans that he voted FOR Cheney’s Energy Act, giving millions and million of dollars in subsidies and tax cuts to the big oil companies while they’re charging average Americans out the patoot for a gallon of gas.

          Get better talking points, Loyal.

        • WestPalm4Hillary

          There is nothing “pro choice” about the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.

          His opposition to that bill is VILE, and there exists some pretty vivid Senate testimony from abortion nurses when the Federal version came up for vote that talked about babies being left to die on shelves, or tossed in trash cans.

          I am pretty much pro-choice, but if the fetus is viable, it’s viable and should be kept alive and adopted out.

        • Susan1968

          This is just yet another Obama scare tactic.

          We have had 7.5 years of Bush and Roe v Wade has ot been overturned.

          I searched John McCain interviews far and wide to find his stance on abortion.

          The only “specific” thing he ever said about Roe v Wade is that it is a “flawed” bill as are many bills.

          And his only specific stance is that he’s against late-term abortions. Many pro-choice people are.

          Journalists have reported it’s impossible to get McCain to say anything specific about overturning Roe v Wade on the record in all these years.

          Add to that, there is a group of Pro-Choice Republican Women that endorsed McCain early on in the GOP primary.

          Note — polls consistently show over 75% of the country is pro-choice.

          Only a minority wants Roe v Wade overturned.

          No president will risk alienating the majority on something as crucial as Roe v Wade to please 25% of the voters.

          Roe v Wade had been on the books, what – nearly 40 years?

          Find me one instance where a bill has been overturned after 40 years.

          This is all Obama bull to scare the uninformed.

        • street_parade

          The Born Alive Infant Protection Act was NOT opposed by NARAL. It was very specifically worded to not conflict with Roe v. Wade in any way. His opposition to it will become a hot button issue in the fall, count on it.

    • Anee

      WHAT IS HE HIDING THEN, WHY WON’T HE PRODUCE HIS RECORDS? WHY DID HE MAKE SURE THERE IS NO PAPER TRAIL?

      • Loyal Democrat

        I can but assume you supported Hillary Clinton, who was not forthcoming with her records either. She could not delete records because that would be a violation of federal law, but she could slow their release to a crawl.

        Obama, on the other hand, has not control over records of his 8 years in the Illinois Senate, because they are property of the state of Illinois. Obama released more tax returns and more earmark requests that Clinton dared to.

        Try again, friend.

        • Mary

          Did you see the earmark Obama approved for the hospital Michelle worked at, Loyal?

          You know, the same hospital that gave Michelle a HUGE raise a month after they got that earmark?

          Did you see the earmark he made sure the Catholic church run by racist Father Pleger got?

          YOUR tax dollars, for Obama’s racist political cronies.

          • Loyal Democrat

            So, Clinton’s record-breaking earmarks for defense contractors aren’t a problem for you at all?

            • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

              So you are against spending money on the Military and protecting the United States at home and abroad?

              BTW… when did you stop being a pedophile?

            • Mary

              You missed the point, Loyal.

              Obama’s earmarks are personal PAYBACKS to the Chicago people who helped him and Michelle get ahead.

              It’s the Chicago way, you know.

            • Susan1968

              Like many Obama-philes you can’t wrap your mind around the fact that for many of us it’s not about Hillary any more…

              It’s about stopping Obama from hijacking the DNC.

              Get it?

  • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

    The Facts from Ross Perot:

    http://perotcharts.com/

    • ritamary

      Sorry I don’t agree with Ross Perot. The United States has huge budget deficits because George Bush had to borrow money to pay for his illegal invasion of Iraq. Are you trying to push privatization of Social Security. That is the position of Austan Goolsby, Obama’s economic adviser. So I don’t think you will get much support here at this blog.

  • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

    March 26th — There’s no paper trail on Obama.

    The president of a prominent watchdog group said Wednesday that he believes Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “intended to leave no paper trail” during his time in the Illinois Senate.

    In a statement, Tom Fitton noted that his group, Judicial Watch, has sought access to Obama’s records as a state senator and questioned whether the presidential candidate has been forthcoming with regard to what happened to those documents.

    However, he said that “nobody knows where they are, if they exist at all” and claimed that “Obama’s story keeps changing.”

    It could mean that Obama tried to hide his work, hoping to keep political opponents from unearthing ammunition in future elections. It could also mean that he didn’t do that much actual work, which would match his wafer-thin record of accomplishments in three years as US Senator.

    It’s the cost of running as a cipher, and of running on ambiguous concepts of hope and change. Having what little records that should exist come up missing doesn’t help build confidence in a candidate’s credibility, either.

    http://www.theobamafile.com

    • Loyal Democrat

      Tom Fitton is the current president of Judicial Watch, a self-described “conservative, non-partisan, educational foundation.”

      So, do you agree with Judicial Watch on overturning Roe V. Wade, ending gay rights, and allowing the suspension of Habeas Corpus rights?

      • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

        November 2007 — Obama has missed the most votes of any Democratic presidential hopeful in the Senate over the last two months, including a vote on an Iran resolution he has blasted Sen. Hillary Clinton for supporting.

        The Illinois Democrat has missed nearly 80 percent of all votes since September.

        Obama routinely avoids voting on any issue that is not helpful to Muslim goals.

        For example, Obama missed a vote on a resolution that declared the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an elite part of the Iranian military, a terrorist organization.

        • Loyal Democrat

          ‘No’ votes don’t do anything in the Senate, only ‘aye’ votes. How could a vote against a resolution possibly affect its passage?

          • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

            Troll Alert.

            Wow you are stupid.

            Present is the politically expediant vote.

            By voting present you cant be held accountable for voting for or against a bill.

            Are you so stupid that you don’t understand even the basics of how dirty politicians work?

            No wonder you are a member of the koolaid brigade.

            Go get an education instead of being spoonfed the obamapudding.

            • Loyal Democrat

              You didn’t answer my question. All you could do was call me names. ‘Present’ votes don’t have anything to do with Obama’s decision not to break off campaign commitments to fly to DC to vote ‘no’ on a resolution that could only be affected by the number of ‘yes’ votes cast.

              Sorry, that dog won’t be hunting any time soon.

              Try again, friend.

          • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

            I bet you’d like to take this last comment back.

            “‘No’ votes don’t do anything in the Senate, only ‘aye’ votes. How could a vote against a resolution possibly affect its passage?”

            You just FAILED 7th and 11th grade buddy. Don’t pass go, do not collect $200. Go back to school and take your US Constitution test.

            • Loyal Democrat

              Please read the message above, Colin. You might learn something.

          • Mary

            Really, Loyal?

            You mean, if Kerry and Daschle had voted NO against the Iraq War resolution, it wouldn’t have done any good?

            Boy, are you poorly informed.

            • Loyal Democrat

              Yes, if Clinton had not showed up to vote that would have been one less ‘aye’ for the Iraq war. The only thing that matters is withholding the requisite ‘yes’ votes needed for passage. Why is this so hard for you to understand?

              • Mary

                But Loyal, all the old traditional Democrats supporting Obama voted FOR that same resolution.

                Don’t you think Daschle and Kerry should resign from Obama’s campaign just so they don’t TARNISH him?

                I sure do.

      • WestPalm4Hillary

        All of this can only happen if a Democratic majority Congress LETS IT HAPPEN.

        The PRESIDENT actually has very limited duties. Chief amongst those being national security and securing the homeland.

        Let the democratic Congress steer social policy, and let us have someone we can trust to put America – and not his own narcissistic desire to make history – first in the Presidency.

        • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

          President Bush has turned the Executive Office into the strongest of all branches. Congress did nothing.

          I trust Nancy Pelosi less than I trust Hussein Obama.

        • Mary

          True dat.

          All this hoopla about McCain/SupremeCourt/Roe v Wade is just crap.

          Roberts and Alito are now sitting on our Supreme Court because the DEMOCRATS in Congress were spineless and put them there.

          Obama wanted to vote for Roberts, but his “political team” told him not to.

          Might jeopardize his future presidential prospects , they said.

          Barf

          • Loyal Democrat

            So, you want McCain to pick the next three justices?

            • Mary

              I’m not sure a man like Obama, who called Donald Rumsfield “not outside the normal behavior,” or Trinity Lutheran, a “mainstream Christian church,”…..

              is even QUALIFIED by his poor judgement to choose anything for my country.

              Did you look up the Global Poverty Act and the Reparations Act yet, Loyal?

              You may be way too naive to even know what you’re supporting, dear.

      • street_parade

        Judicial Watch was one of the few organizations to go after the records of Dick Cheney’s secret ‘energy task force’ meetings. You might try to have fewer knee-jerk reactions and a slightly more open mind. You might learn something.

  • Loyal Democrat

    - Obama passed legislation with Republican Senator Jim Talent to give gas stations a tax credit for installing E85 ethanol refueling pumps. The tax credit covers 30 percent of the costs of switching one or more traditional petroleum pumps to E85, which is an 85 percent ethanol/15 percent gasoline blend.

    - After a number of inmates on death row were found innocent, Senator Obama worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases.

    - His first law was passed with Republican Tom Coburn, a measure to rebuild trust in government by allowing every American to go online and see how and where every dime of their tax dollars is spent.

    - Obama created the Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families in 2000 and successfully sponsored a measure to make the credit permanent in 2003. The law offered about $105 million in tax relief over three years.

    - Obama joined forces with former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-IL) to pass the toughest campaign finance law in Illinois history. The legislation banned the personal use of campaign money by Illinois legislators and banned gifts from lobbyists. Before the law was passed, one organization ranked Illinois worst among 50 states for its campaign finance regulations.

    - As a member of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Senator Obama has fought to help Illinois veterans get the disability pay they were promised, while working to prepare the VA for the return of the thousands of veterans who will need care after Iraq and Afghanistan.

    - He traveled to Russia with Republican Dick Lugar to begin a new generation of non-proliferation efforts designed to find and secure deadly weapons around the world.

    - Obama has been a leading advocate for protecting the right to vote, helping to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act and leading the opposition against discriminatory barriers to voting.

    - In the U.S. Senate, Obama introduced the STOP FRAUD Act to increase penalties for mortgage fraud and provide more protections for low-income homebuyers, well before the current subprime crisis began.

    - Obama sponsored legislation to combat predatory payday loans, and he also was credited with lobbied the state to more closely regulate some of the most egregious predatory lending practices.

    - Barack Obama introduced the Patriot Employer Act of 2007 to provide a tax credit to companies that maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in America relative to those outside the US; maintain their corporate headquarters in America; pay decent wages; prepare workers for retirement; provide health insurance; and support employees who serve in the military.

    - Obama worked to pass a number of laws in Illinois and Washington to improve the health of women. His accomplishments include creating a task force on cervical cancer, providing greater access to breast and cervical cancer screenings, and helping improve prenatal and premature birth services.

    - Obama has introduced and helped pass bipartisan legislation to limit the abuse of no-bid federal contracts.

    - Obama and Senator Feingold (D-WI) took on both parties and proposed ethics legislation that was described as the “gold standard” for reform. It was because of their leadership that ending subsidized corporate jet travel, mandating disclosure of lobbyists’ bundling of contributions, and enacting strong new restrictions of lobbyist-sponsored trips became part of the final ethics bill that was signed into law.

    • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

      An e-mail message made public on March 11, 2008, in the fraud trial of Antoin Rezko, a businessman and political contributor, brought attention to Obama’s role in discussions involving a state health planning board that Mr. Rezko is accused of improperly influencing.

      The message indicated that Obama, and other top Illinois politicians, consulted in 2003 on legislation to keep the board, which approved the construction of health facilities, from expiring under sunset provisions in state law.

      The vaguely worded message also seemed to raise the possibility that Mr. Obama, who at the time was chairman of the Illinois Senate’s health committee, had been involved in recommending candidates for the board.

      Mr. Rezko is accused of using his influence in state government to stack the board with associates, including some who made political contributions to Mr. Obama and other top Illinois politicians, and of seeking a bribe on a hospital project.

      Mr. Rezko is accused of using his influence in state government to stack the board with associates, including some who made political contributions to Mr. Obama and other top Illinois politicians, and of seeking a bribe on a hospital project.

      Mr. Pickering said he and Mr. Wilhelm had “worked closely” over six months with several state legislators to extend the life of the health facilities board. He then listed Democratic and Republican leaders in the state House and Senate, including Mr. Obama.

      Mr. Pickering’s message went on to suggest four candidates to serve on the board, stating that “our attached recommendations reflect that involvement” with the political leaders.

      http://www.theobamafile.com

    • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

      April 7th — Obama is chair of The Subcommittee On European Affairs.

      It has Jurisdiction over the countries of Europe, as well as NATO activities. “Jurisdiction: The subcommittee deals with all matters concerning U.S. relations with the countries on the continent of Europe … and with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.”

      He hasn’t convened a single meeting.

      Obama has never held a single policy hearing on anything, not Afghanistan, or anywhere else.

      • Loyal Democrat

        Is Afghanistan in Europe now? Or is that just where John McCain thinks it is? None of the candidates was holding hearings while they were running for president. Try again, friend.

        • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

          February 1st — The Times (UK) has discovered Illinois state documents recording that Fintrade Services, a Panamanian company controlled by Nadhmi Auchi, an Iraqi-born British billionaire, lent money to an Obama fundraiser in May 2005.

          The undeclared $3.5 million (£1.8 million) payment from the corrupt businessman has landed Tony Rezko, Barack Obama’s former fundraiser behind bars.

          The payment, disclosed in court papers, is the first time that Mr Obama’s long-serving bagman Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Syrian immigrant to the United States, has been linked to Nadhmi Auchi, who is one of Britain’s richest men. The relationship is a potential embarrassment for Obama, who has made his opposition to the Iraq war a central plank of his campaign.

        • WestPalm4Hillary

          The point is NATOs involvement in Afghanistan. Ya know, that organization made up primarily of our European allies?

          • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

            NATO in Afghanistan

            NATO is a key component of the international community’s engagement in Afghanistan, assisting the Afghan authorities in providing security and stability, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance.
            “This is one of the most challenging tasks NATO has ever taken on, but it is a critical contribution to international security” – NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

            The Alliance’s aim is to help establish the conditions in which Afghanistan can enjoy – after decades of conflict, destruction and poverty – a representative government and self-sustaining peace and security.

            NATO’s role is a key part of the Afghanistan Compact, a five-year plan between the government of Afghanistan and the international community, which sets goals relating to the security, governance and economic development of the country.

            http://www.nato.int/home.htm

        • HARP

          You DO know that NATO is serving in Afghanistan. RIGHT. shheese.

          • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

            Turkey is also a member of NATO.

            Turkey is a key to US strategic defense. Has anyone taken a look at the map over there?

            We are on the east and west borders of Iran. (Iraq and Afghanistan)

            Putin has different hopes for the region, and so does China.

            Oil crossroads of the world.

        • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

          you forgot one thing troll.

          None of the other candidates only had 140 days served in the US senate before starting their Presidential Beauty pageant runs.

          Your chump in the empty suit fails and so do you troll.

        • ritamary

          The soldiers in Afghanistan are under the control of NATO. Ever heard of NATO? It is a military alliance. That is one reason Obama should have called meetings of that subcommittee. Congress has a constitutional duty to perform oversight of the executive branch. Have you heard about that?

        • street_parade

          His committee has jurisdiction over NATO activites. You know what NATO is right? You know that NATO is the main military force in Afganistan, right? You understand the importance of Afghanistan, correct? If not you might want to google the following: Taliban, Osama bin Laden, September 11, 9/11, World Trade Center,al Qaeda.

          Maybe you should spend less time playing the World of Warcraft and more time keeping up on recent events, apart from BO of course.

    • GoHillary

      boloney! Answer the question!

      Since nobama joined the US Senate he has claim to only 2 bills:

      1.Propmote democracy in the democratic republic of Congo

      2.Name a post office.
      ————-
      credited..
      worked to pass..
      worked for…
      cosponsored (with about 28 others)…..
      introduced…

      These are all cop-outs

      • hats

        Well said, GoHillary.

    • NY still loves Hillary

      If he actually sponsored or passed all these laws, there ought to be plenty of documentation showing all the research he did, phone logs showing he called other legislators for support, and other Illinois State Senate members popping up to support the claims – right? *crickets*

    • Anee

      WHERE ARE RECORDS? WHY WON’T HE RELEASE HIS RECORD? WHAT IS HE HIDING?

    • Mary

      Tell us about the Global Poverty Act (S.2433) written by Sen. Obama, Loyal.

      Tell us how much it will cost the American people in higher taxes, and what it is for.

      THEN tell us about the S40, written by Rep. Conyers, providing for Reparations for Slavery, being held for passage until Obama is in the White House.

      Look those 2 pieces of legislation up, Loyal, and get back to us , ok?

  • AF catfish

    Too funny of all the material to nail Obama on they seize on this. Whatever works!

  • Freedom Fighter

    So Barack Obama isn’t perfect, and he doesn’t have the world’s most accomplished resume. But he is young, and has a lot of room to grow. And he is a lot better than John McCain. When you compare Barack Obama side by side with John McCain, on judgment, character, honesty, leadership, policies, there’s really no comparison. Barack is much more suited to be our president.

    • HARP

      Adlai Stevenson:

      We should be careful and discriminating in all the advice we give. We should be especially careful in giving advice that we would not think of following ourselves. Most of all, we ought to avoid giving counsel which we don’t follow when it damages those who take us at our word.

    • http://thehorizontalworld.blogspot.com/ Medusa

      Look at this FABULOUS new post from Anglachel! This says it all about BO and his little piglets.

      OINC
      The new name for the Democratic National Committee:

      Obama Idolaters National Committee

      All lined up at the trough, ready to scarf down whatever swill The Precious dumps in.

      Anglachel

      • Dead Ender1 Bites Bambi

        I like OINC.

        It’s catchy.

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

      Oh yes he is so suited to be our president…

      If this was the united states of Chicago…

      http://www.patriotroom.com/?p=357

      In 2000, a young 20-something reporter, Todd Spivak was assigned to cover local Chicago politics. Obama was just a rank-and-file state senator in Illinois.

      It was 2000 and I was a young, hungry reporter at the Hyde Park Herald and Lakefront Outlook community newspapers earning $19,000 a year covering politics and crime.

      I talked with Obama on a regular basis — a couple times a month, at least. I’d ask him about his campaign-finance reports, legislation he was sponsoring and various local issues. He wrote an occasional column published in our papers. It ran with a headshot that made him look about 14 years old.

      These days when Obama is asked on the campaign trail about his legislative accomplishments, he often rattles off several bills he sponsored while in the Illinois state senate. Spivak knows a little about Obama’s career in Illionois and there is a lot less to it than meets the eye.

      It’s a lengthy record filled with core liberal issues. But what’s interesting, and almost never discussed, is that he built his entire legislative record in Illinois in a single year.

      Republicans controlled the Illinois General Assembly for six years of Obama’s seven-year tenure. Each session, Obama backed legislation that went nowhere; bill after bill died in committee. During those six years, Obama, too, would have had difficulty naming any legislative ­achievements.

      Then, in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor’s office as well as both legislative chambers.

      The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James “Pate” Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor.

      Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama’s. He became Obama’s ­kingmaker.

      Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city’s most popular black call-in radio ­program.

      I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows:

      “He said, ‘Cliff, I’m gonna make me a U.S. Senator.’”

      “Oh, you are? Who might that be?”

      “Barack Obama.”

      Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

      “I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen,” State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. “Barack didn’t have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

      “I don’t consider it bill jacking,” Hendon told me. “But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.”

      During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama’s stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law — including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.

      And in return for all the king-making efforts by Jones on Obama’s behalf, Obama made sure Jones was repaid handsomely.

      So how has Obama repaid Jones?

      Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones’s Senate district.

      Shortly after Jones became Senate president, I remember asking his view on pork-barrel spending.

      I’ll never forget what he said:

      “Some call it pork; I call it steak.”

      Nice. It ain’t pork and it ain’t steak. It is our freakin’ money.

      Obama also touts all his “experience” as a community organizer. What that has to do with his qualifications to be president is anyone’s guess. But, nevertheless, turns out he didn’t really do that either.

      On the stump, Obama has frequently invoked his experiences as a community organizer on the Chicago South Side in the early 1990s, when he passed on six-figure salary offers at corporate law firms after graduating from Harvard Law School to direct a massive voter-registration drive.

      But, as a state senator, Obama evaded leadership on a host of critical community issues, from historic preservation to the rapid demolition of nearby public-housing projects, according to many South Siders.

      Harold Lucas, a veteran South Side community organizer who remembers when Obama was “just a big-eared kid fresh out of school,” says he didn’t finally decide to support Obama’s presidential bid until he was actually inside the voting booth on Super Tuesday.

      “I’m not happy about the quality of life in my community,” says Lucas, who now heads a black-heritage tourism business in Chicago. “As a local elected official, he had a primary role in that.” [snip]

      When the City of Chicago seized the 70-year-old Gerri’s Palm Tavern by eminent domain in 2001, sparking citywide protests, Obama was silent. And he offered no public comments when the 30-year owner of the Checkerboard Lounge was forced to relocate a couple years later.

      Even in Hyde Park, Obama declined to take a position on a years-long battle waged by hundreds of local community activists fighting against the city’s plan to replace the historic limestone seawall along Lake Michigan — a popular spot to sunbathe and swim — with concrete steps. [snip]

      Obama’s aloofness on key community issues for years frustrated Lucas and many other South Siders. Now they believe he was just afraid of making political enemies or being pigeonholed as a black candidate.

      No legislative record. No experience as a community organizer. Obama truly is an empty suit.

    • Tucson Transplant

      But he is young, and has a lot of room to grow

      …So, as a nation, we must put our well being and very existence on hold while Barky graduates from pampers to big boy pants.

      No thanks.

      PUMA

      • Mary

        WE’ve already HAD 8 years of a president who “has a lot of room to grow,” desperate to put wise, experienced people around him to make his lack of experience look better.

        No thank you.

        We need Ready on Day One.

    • GoHillary

      yeah a coke addict, that brings guns to political battles with a woman of 60 and man of 70! Nice.
      Room to grow from Guns to nuclear weapons indeed.

    • josgirl

      Why?!?!
      Because he’s younger?
      That’s a joke, right?

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

      So Barack Obama isn’t perfect, and he doesn’t have the world’s most accomplished resume. But he is young, and has a lot of room to grow. And he is a lot better than John McCain. When you compare Barack Obama side by side with John McCain, on judgment, character, honesty, leadership, policies, there’s really no comparison. Barack is much more suited to be our president.

      When you compare Barack Obama side by side with John McCain, on judgment, character, honesty, leadership, policies, there’s really no comparison.

      When you compare Barack Obama side by side with John McCain, on judgment, character, honesty, leadership, policies, there’s really no comparison.

      When you compare Barack Obama side by side with John McCain, on judgment, character, honesty, leadership, policies, there’s really no comparison.

      You are absolutely right.

      When you compare them on Judgement, Barack Loses.
      When you compare them on Character, Barack Loses.
      When you compare them on Honesty, Barack Loses.
      When you compare them on Leadership, Barack Loses.
      When you compare them on Policies, Barack Loses.

      Infact unless you are a hopium addict with no brain who believes what he is spoon fed and buys the hope and dope you can not look yourself in the mirror and say he wins on any of the issues.

      Barack Obama is dangerous and dangerously inept.

      Vote hism at your own peril.

      • POdVet

        Don’t forget the main point. Hillary surpasses both of them combined! She has the fight, tenacity, and history of working across the aisles of McCain. And she has the positions Obama claims to have only hers are better and she actually believes and fights for them unlike Obama. She spent 8 years under the Republican microscope, and they couldn’t find anything except shit they made up to sound like she did nothing wrong in a fraud case where the Clinton’s LOST money. Yeah she broke laws to lose money…I believe that don’t you? Obama is deeply tied in with the corruption of Antoin Rezko and the release from Rezko blatantly points out that Fitzgerald obviously has enough on Obama to know it’s worth his time and effort to look for more. He wouldn’t be looking into it if he didn’t already have some evidence!

        Those you see following the Obamessiah are not Democrats, though the species may try to look similar. They are in fact nothing but JACKASSES!
        P.U.M.A.

    • typical irishman

      Most Afghan “Freedom Fighters,” AKA Mujahideen , would agree with you. But I am sure the war hero , John McCain would not :) and niether do we.

    • Anee

      WRONG, WHEN COMPARED MC CAIN WINS. BASED ON CHARACTER, SERVICE TO OUR COUNTRY AND LOVE OF OUR COUNTRY.

    • bonita

      You’re back! Yesterday I asked if you were one of the 12 year olds he is recruiting to vote for him. I beginning to believe you are because your reasoning is CHILDLIKE. There’s a reason people can’t vote until their eighteen.

    • Mandelay

      Barack Obama and honesty? He has repeatedly misled the public on the amount of money he received from Tony Rezko … he repeatedly misled the public about his involvement with Jeremiah Wright, their real relationship and the nature of the black liberation theology practiced at TUCC … he has repeatedly overstated his “accomplishments” as a legislator and, when we question that, he has repeatedly used the “I’m not part of the Washington establishment” argument i.e. I’m a shiny new baby ready to work for you … he has a foreign relations subcommittee and, in spite of all the criticism regarding his lack of any foreign relations credentials, he has not held a single meeting of his own subcommittee … and he has repeatedly shown his mettle as a gutter political operative who has manipulated the public and press, who has used the color of his skin to play hit-and-run race cards and gender cards and now, going for the “triple discrimination award” of these political games, he’s playing the age card with McCain. Suited to be our president? Never. He’s Chicago Corruption through and through and now he’s dragged the core DNC operations to Chicago where he can complete his “transformative work” on what was the Democratic Party. He is dangerous to our country. If elected, our taxes will subsidize his corrupt agenda. Fellow travelers, each of us needs to find a way to make our vote count in November as we agree on one thing — Barack Obama must not be allowed to assume the office of POTUS. It will be on all our heads if he does. There is time between now and November to carefully consider how you will vote. Staying home cannot be an option. Saving our country from this is agenda item number one. Nothing else comes close.

    • street_parade

      Sweetie, Barack ain’t young. In a few weeks he’ll be 47 years old. He’s pushing 50…you are who you are by that age. And ‘who’ Obama is an opportunist, a liar and a snake oil salesman.

  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

    Well since the Miss America Beauty Pageant Thread is gone i will rpost this here

    What are the Potential August through October Surprises:

    Tony Rezko Sings like Barbra Streisand and the subsequent DVD entitled “Ali Baba and The Fourty Chicago Thieves” replaces Alanis Morisset’s Jagged Little Pill as the number one selling DVD by someone who can’t actually sing of all time.

    Barack Obama becomes a person of interest in the ongong indictments of dirty chicogo politicians – he quickly throws himself under the bus saying “i am not the man I knew.” Fitzpatrick decides to go ahead and indict – the liberal Obama backers claim its just politics of distraction as they chant Obama Obama.

    Blagonavich is Indicted on corruption charges and barricades himself in the governors mansion forcing the government to send in the WACKO swat team to extricate him. The event is televised live and replaces the OJ freeway chase as the most watched event on day time television in history.

    Michelle Obama releases Her Greatest Whitey Hits CD – The Barack Obama campaign counters that infact it is not her but Milli Vanilli who is doing the actual singing. Milli or is it Vanilli who is still around, can’t remember, vehemently denies involvement saying that whitey is just not a term his generation would use.

    Barack Obama’s discussions with anti-israeli factions on his overseas visit replaces O’Reily as the number one show on Fox News. The show’s title Homies for Hammas draws fire from Hezbollah claiming favoratism – in its rerelease to Al Jazira state television it is retitled “Husseins before Hos.”

    A Terror Attack on the U.S.A. is stopped in the nick of time by the bush administration with much fanfare and news coverage. Keith Oberman pontificates that it looks like a setup by George Bush to shore up his popularity. Then his head explodes on national TV. Sadley due to the fact that MSNBC is one of the lowest rated news channels, only 137 viewers actually see it.

    Barack Obama throws more people under his unity bus. (Editor’s Note – See every disturbing obama association news story prior to this one.)

    Osama Bin Laden is Captured by us armed forces in a covert operation in the mountain regions bordering Afgahnistan/Pakistan helping Monkey Boy Bush’s approval ratings skyrocket back up into the 70 percentile range. In actuality he was captured 4 weeks earlier but was placed in an underground hole for an extended period of time to ensure he gave the bedraggled Sadam Capture Video a run for its money.

    Barack Obama’s real birth certificate is released proving once and for all that his is in fact the son of Stanley and Barack Sr, not the son of Mary and Joseph.

    An Extinction Level Event asteroid hits planet earth whiping out humanity as we know it – The cockroaches and Donna Brazile survive. Thankfully, jackasses and insects can’t mate.

    • Loyal Democrat

      Thanks for learning from Hillary’s mistake and not referencing a political assassination as your hope for redemption.

      • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

        Actually, the only political assassination this election season was the hit job done on Bill and Hillary by the dirty shits of the Pay for Play and buy your vote Obama Campaign.

        You obama freaks have a lot of nerve.

        Oh wait whats this? you forgot to call me racist. Adolf Axelfraud is going to be dissappointed that you didnt follow his talking points.

        • Mary

          We will not forgive Clyburn or Jesse Jackson Jr or Eugene Robinson for their figurative assassination of Bill Clinton’s legacy for their own personal agendas.

          They have forever tarnished their own credibility to slander the very president who did the most for their “people.”

          I hope Bill Clinton, from this point on, ignores them all.

          They don’t deserve his help anymore.

      • Anee

        OH YEAH, WE FORGOT OBAMA WILL BRING A GUN… UHH SCARY!!!

      • Hope Floats

        A political assassination is metaphorical. RFK was a politician who was assassinated. “… a politician’s assassination.” But thanks for indulging in character assassination by implying Clinton was hinting Obama might be killed.

      • street_parade

        You know, its funny…that RFK crap was the moment when I KNEW I would NEVER vote for your candidate. If I knew NOTHING else about him, just knowing that he was sick enough to float that crap was all I needed to know.

    • Hope

      Love it. love it. Homies for Hamas, ROFL!

    • ingyz

      Kieth Oberman’s PAP smear came back negative…

  • Gary

    Perfect.

  • typical irishman

    Actually Obama is trying to promote the Congo in our democracy through his radical church affiliations and other radical Chicago black groups.

    • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

      Obama’s pastor Jeremiah A. Wright told The New York Times in an interview, published March 6th: “When his (Obama’s) enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli,” with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to visit Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, “a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”

      http://www.theobamafile.com

      • typical irishman

        Hey Colin :)
        The Jewish people sure as hell wont have any problem distinguishing Obama from the snowball will they? LOL! It will be quick work.

        • Hope Floats

          I don’t think that was a typical comment of the irishman’s.

    • Anee

      Yes, and with the GLOBAL POVERTY ACT, which will increase poverty in America and help his favorite country Kenya.

      • typical irishman

        REPARATION time baby. There goes all the social security and medicare for American seniors and the disabled and the poor. We will need the extra cash to pay the REPARATION.

  • lute

    This was my problem with Edwards.
    Big talk talk and nothing behind it except a
    conservative senate record.

    Matthews can be terrific. It’s too bad his
    ethics don’t match his talent.

  • John

    Barack Obama has not proven he is suited to be a US Senator yet. The most important bill that he voted for in the US Senate was the Bush Eneregy bill in 2005 – the bill that has given US oil companies over $6 billion in tax breaks for “research of renewable energy resources.” Please let me know if ExxonMobil has announced any progress in their “research” for the $6 billion of US-taxpayer money given to them. (That’s how tax-breaks work, my friends, if they are not paying the tax – you are.) John McCain and Hillary Clinton both voted against this bill. I find it ironic that in this economy when so many Americans are being squeezed by record-high fuel prices – it is Barack Obama who voted with Bush & the oil companies and now claims he is going to “take on the oil companies.” Obama is not suited to lead at all.

    • ritamary

      Maybe Barack just pushed the wrong button again…

    • ObamatheMarxist

      Yea, I also found it interesting that texas oilman A R SANCHEZ JR of SANCHEZ OIL & GAS was a contributor to his 2004 senate run. Why would someone in Texas care about the Illinois senate seat. If you ever take a look at the big contributors for that campaign, it is full of real estate developers and attorneys. Oh, also George, Jennifer, Jonathan, Robert and Susan Soros.

  • BluDawg

    Dear Clinton Dem,

    Yesterday’s revelation that Barack Obama is planning to move a large portion of the DNC operations to his home town of Chicago has set off all kinds of alarms at Clinton Dems.

    This is disturbing on so many levels. Chicago is widely known for corrupt “Machine Politics” and stokes our worst fear that “The Chicago Machine” is going national. Four of the last seven Governors of Illinois have been indicted for corruption and an effort is already underway to impeach current Governor Blagojevich for activities uncovered during the trial of Obama’s long-time fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko.

    The Rezko trial has uncovered a complex network of cronies, and patronage — and a shockingly large number of them have had relationships on some level with Barack Obama. Do we want the appearance, real or imagined, that these corrosive elements will be influencing our party at the most fundamental levels?

    A good number of us already suspect that this has been taking place. Please contact Howard Dean and especially all representatives on the Delegate List in your state and tell them that you strongly oppose this move. Express your concern about the direction of the Democratic party.

    Pam Hamilton
    Clinton Democrats

    Keep Fighting!

  • NITEOWL

    The Brown/Orange Shirts are out early today.

    • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3_jh2dO78U&feature=related Jeremiah God Damn AmeriKKKa Wright

      yes they are.

      The Obama Youth are hitting the blogwaves.

  • MikeB

    Hillary should do what Reagan did in 1976.

    Reagan endorsed Ford. Did not lift a finger to help him. His supporters stayed home. Ford was defeated.

    Reagan ran four years later and won a landslide.

    Sure Obama and his groupies in the media will blame Hillary. But they will blame her no matter what. They blame her for everything. She might as well do what is best for her country and herself.

    President McCain with a Dem congress is better than Obama who will be in over his head dealing with all the problems facing the country.

    • http://citizens.johnmccain.com/ Colin

      Hillary has $24 million tucked away for the GE. Obama is outspending his collections. DNC is broke, and Denver already knows they are going to get stuck with the bill.

      • StrawberrybitesBarky

        I heard that, too about Hillary already having a GE war chest. I guess I should trust her, she’s a whole lot more clever than Barky.

        • GoHillary

          They are talking 200 million

    • StrawberrybitesBarky

      Mike, if barky does manage to get into the White House, how much time wil he spend defending himself against his past ties? They managed to hamstring Clinton with nothing but rumours and a blow job. Barky won’t make it through one term.

  • catherine

    The fact remains that Obama is more interested in winning than doing the work. I know people like that on my job- charming, know how to work the room- but in substance very shallow- and with regards to real solid accomplishments- even less. People are often impressed with their “street smarts” but have little respect for them. Unfortunately many young adults who have been spearheading and volunteering for BO’s campaign (while many hardworking middle class parents of these college kids are working, some on two jobs, to put food on their tables so their young adult children can go out and volunteer and have internships con political campaigns )have been raised largely on image and the MTV video culture. Their heros have been Brittany Spears, Lindsay Lohan, etc. So to them Obama looks “cool”. I think we should raise the voting age to 30 until these young adults grow up as see what real work and leadership looks like. Our country depends on having a mature leader with an integrated mind- not just one with a single minded goal to get elected. His comment yesterday with Rendell at a PA fundraiser was so telling. “We don’t need the people, we just need their checks.” The comment of an individual who maturity, grounding, and basic democratic values. At all costs we must stop him from becoming the democratic nominee no less our next president.

    • Mary

      “We don’t need the people. We just need their checks.”

      The Obamas in a nutshell, folks.

      It’s all you need to know.

  • http://bluedawgdemocrat.wordpress.com BlueDawgDemocrat

    Hey, I just saw him on the news sandbagging. For once it wasn’t a political opponent.

    God, haven’t the people in Iowa suffered enough?

  • John

    Philadelphia Eagles fans were hurt & bewildered when Barack Obama claimed they would agree with his comments to “bring a gun”. Bud Sestanick, long-time Birds fan said, “I brung a watermelon once that I injected with some vodka but I never brung no gun”. Former Mayor of Philadelphia Ed Rendell admitted, “I threw a snowball at (Dallas Cowboys coach) Jimmy Johnson once.” Ed Robinson, long-time season ticket holder, said, “Barack Obama? Is he that kid we drafted out of UCLA?” Donovan McNabb said, “Keep my name out of your mouth!”

    • PragmatismRules

      is this all true?

  • treshaun

    I just think u shuld give thise man a brek. he be yung and he can give a good speekh. also me think he will help out africa BIG TIME. when he wun against that week woman my people in my country all in street jumping and cheering, because we know we abut to get a free help lot ofhelp so we dont have to work.

    • StrawberrybitesBarky

      Knock it off.

      • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

        No way man… I love satire. Keep it up.

        BTW… where can I get me some of those O’boy monkey sock puppets? My dog loves to chew those up.

        No one seemd to mind Hillary nutcrackers… hell I even saw those for sale in the airport news stands….

        Can’t find that sock puppet to save my life. They must sell out faster than Wii’s.

  • Joeconservative

    Obama is a fraud and everyone knows it. Who would you trust to handle Iraq? Obama? What about Iran? Obama will capitulate to Iran’s terrorist leader. John McCain will show Amadinejad diplomacy alright… diplomacy under the sonic boom of a B-2 bomber!

    Also, we cannot allow that fraud to turn our healthcare system, the best in the world… into a socialist mess. People who don’t have insurance have made that decision on their own and don’t deserve government handouts! If you want a so-called “universal healthcare” plan, move to France!

    Also, a President McCain will not allow decisions like the one just passed by the Supreme court giving rights to terrorists! We must nominate strict constructionists like Alito and Scalia!

    The PUMA/Conservative alliance for John McCain!

    • StrawberrybitesBarky

      Geez, another one.

      • typical irishman

        Maybe we should just give Obama and McCain a knife and a gun and let em have a go at each other from half arms length :)

        • Mary

          Well, McCain DID offer Obama 10 town halls, with no journalists or pundits present, just talking to the American people about what to do with our country.

          But Obama chickened out.

          So I guess we ALL know about Obama’s “bravery” in one-on-one fights.

  • alee21

    Does anyone know for a fact (and provide a link) that Howard Dean is not letting Hillary’s name be on the ballot at the convention?

    Is this allowed and why haven’t we heard from Clinton?

    Also I’ve been reading that the Obamaites are replacing delegates they are not sure about with Obama loyalists. Is that true nationwide?

    What can we do?

    • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

      Vote for McCain, that’s what we do.

      McCain in a landslide.

  • http://bluedawgdemocrat.wordpress.com BlueDawgDemocrat

    Berrybites:
    Is Joe for real or is he a Obamabot using reverse psychology…nah, they’re not that smart.

    • StrawberrybitesBarky

      Eh Blue, I’m thinkin’ we’re getting it from both sides. Angry Cythiniab true believer types and republican moles here to keep us at each others throats. Frankly, I find it facinating. I don’t know how Larry is able to handle it. I admire him more and more each day. If I were in his shoes, I would have packed it in years ago, told both parties to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut and moved to Pago Pago.

      • cynthiab

        I’m not angry at all. I am amused, but also saddened by the very disturbing mentality of the fringe Hillary supporters who post on this site. You are reminiscent of the rabid bush supporters who comprise the 20% bracket of his dismal approval rating.

        • Mary

          So, where’s that paragraph in your own words summarizing your cut and paste, sweetie?

          All you got in the post above is trash talk full of childish put-downs.

          Tell us what you’re FOR, in your own words.

          • cynthiab

            I’m for ending the war and preventing a new war with Iran. I am former Military. I have draft age sons and have people I know that are serving.

            I am for removing the influence of big business and lobbyists from government.

            I am for robust diplomacy and rebuilding the reputation of the US around the world.

            I am for a fair tax system that doesn’t punish the middle class.

            I am for a healthcare system that covers everyone.

            I am for TRUTH in politics and in campaigns.

            I am for fair trade policies that protect the interests of american business and enforces trade agreements…

            I am for a safe and clean enviornment. Alternative fuel research etc…

            Mrs. Clinton couldn’t fulfill my requirements.

            • StrawberrybitesBarky

              Holy shit, than why are you supporting Barky? He and his foreign affairs advisor Powers (the one who called Hillary a monster) said in an interview to a British news paper that Barky intended to keep a skeleton force of about 60,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely. If you’re ex military this should scare the hell out of you. Those guys are already pulling 18 hour shifts, 7 days a week as it is. How is cutting the force to the bare bones going to help? And did you know that Exelon (nuclear power company) and General Dynamics both give big bucks to Barky? And both those companies are doing business in Iraq? We’re an ex military family also, we’re dealing with the fallout from Iraq and we see barky as at least unprepared to handle the CINC position but at most, just as corrupt as Bush.

            • POdVet

              More cut and paste talking points…But I’ll address one of them to be nice.

              “I am for TRUTH in politics and in campaigns.”
              Was it truth in politics when the Obama campaigns official website allowed a story to remain claiming Clinton’s pastor was a convicted child molester for 3 weeks after it was proven to be a blatant lie! It was only removed AFTER other websites started reporting about them pushing this blatant lie.

              Those you see following the Obamessiah are not Democrats, though the species may try to look similar. They are in fact nothing but JACKASSES!
              P.U.M.A.

            • Mary

              Well well well….where to begin?

              1. Ending the war.
              Obama is not going to achieve this. His own policy advisor said his scenario is a best-case scenario, and he will change his plans when he hears from the generals on the ground.

              2. Robust diplomacy
              I see. We’ve HAD diplomacy with Iran (multi-nation) and North Korea. They just kept building nuclear weapons and nuclear plants. If our negotiating allies like France and Germany feel that negotiations are a waste of time, will you abandon them?

              3. Fair tax policy
              Why hasn’t Obama led on abolishing the Alternative Minimum Tax in the Senate, Cynthia? That is the biggest problem for middle class families. Obama COULD have written legislation to abolish it , instead of writing legislation to eliminate Global Poverty (raising taxes to do so). Why do you think Obama never had the courage to help them middle class by leading on the AMT abolishment?

              4. Healthcare system covering everyone.
              Obama does not support universal healthcare. Did you not hear Edwards trash Obama’s plan in the debates as not good enough? Obama allows all the young, healthy 21-30 year-olds to opt out of a universal healthcare plan. What that achieves, my dear, is making it cost MORE for anyone else. He also allows insurance companies to choose NOT to insure anyone with a pre-existing condition. If healthcare for all is your goal, Obama is not the guy to get it done.

              5. TRUTH in politics and campaigns

              You mean, like feeding the media false attacks on the Clintons as racists, using Harry and Louise Republican attack ads to trash universal healthcare, claiming the only reason Clinton won New Hampshire was because those voters are all racists, claiming Hillary showed no tears after Katrina? THAT kind of truth?

              6. FAIR trade

              You mean, like Obama’s economic advisor going secretly to Canadian officials and telling them to ignore his concerns about NAFTA—he’s not gonna change a thing and it’s all just politics—then getting caught in a flat out lie when he said the meetings never happened? THAT fair trade?

              7. Safe and clean environment

              Well, ok. The legislation the Democrats tried to pass (they knew it wouldn’t pass, but did it for political reasons to shame the Repubs)……that legislation would have added a 53 cent per gallon federal tax for Americans to pay in order to fund the system the Democrats wanted. You think the middle class wants to pay $4.00 a gallon PLUS 43 cents per gallon MORE for another federal program in Washington? You think that would support your “fair taxes for the middle class” proposition?

              I honor your military service. My Marine nephew did 3 tours, earned a Silver Star, was there in the plaza when Saddam’s statue came down, was involved in the Fallujah fight TWICE. He’s quite proud of his service, too.

              But he is under NO ILLUSIONS that Barak Obama will get us out of Iraq any sooner than anyone else, or that he has a single clue about what’s going on over there, since he hasn’t bothered to find out or visit since before the surge.

              My Marine nephew’s pretty smart that way.

              I wish you the best of luck wading your way through the contradictions your positions pose for you, given your obvious misinformation about Obama’s proposed policies.

              I suggest you read and study more than just the Obama website.

              Adios, dear.

              • Mary

                And by the way, Mr. Obama doesn’t fulfill MY requirements.

              • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

                Right on the Money… Well said Mary.

            • alee21

              Neither can Obama. Haven’t you been following his flipflop positions?
              He promises changes he can’t deliver. That’s the bottom line.

        • Madam DeFarge

          fringe, my ass. WE’RE THE MAJORITY.

        • Anee

          Then go away we don’t need you, and your messiah and his devil Brazile say they don’t need us either.

        • Susan1968

          Cynthiab:

          You’ll get a chance to test your theory on election day.

          That is, unless Rezko rolls on Obama before the DNC Convention.

        • fran

          If we’re so fringe, why are you here and why do you care? Do some electoral math sweetie, and discount that “fringe” 20-25% and see how well your Precious does in the GE. I love that you underestimate us…please continue.

  • jnm594

    Sorry I just spit out my coffee…LOVE THIS VIDEO!!

    The MSM built him up like the he is the second coming and I have a gut feeling thay are going to rip him apart. Of course only after he is the “official” nominee.

    McCain ’08
    Clinton ’12

    I might be a Democrat but I’m not a Marxist

  • http://bluedawgdemocrat.wordpress.com BlueDawgDemocrat

    wish we had “report abuse” like we did at Hill’s site…we wouldn’t have to put up with electronic version of pre-k craft time…cut and paste much?

    good one berry;)

  • standard

    By this time, I was hoping to see a
    CALL TO ACTION blog.

    It seems that if we could petition Dean out
    of office, and get a NON PARTISAN director,
    committed to PARTY UNITY – who wanted to
    see the FL and MI votes count, we could
    all come together.

    First things first – GET RID OF DEAN.

    How would we proceed? There is a petition
    up, by anonymous in Hello Kitty colors.

    Are none of the legit self-celebrating action
    blogs trying to get this present DNC bunch out?

    • Madam DeFarge

      HEY, HO!
      DEAN MUST GO!

  • http://bluedawgdemocrat.wordpress.com BlueDawgDemocrat

    Just read the “Statements on Standards.” I give them a full throated and resounding, endorsement.
    If I have ever in any way made any statement that could be misconstrued as racist, I wholeheartedly apologize.

    If I came across as snarky or satirical…

  • Perry Logan

    It’s not just about legislation, you know.

    For example, Obama stole the nomination from the voters’ preferred candidate. That’s a hell of an accomplishment.

    In just a few short months, Obama has set back race relations in the U.S. by 30 years. That can’t be easy.

    Obama has totally screwed our chance of having either an African American or a woman in the White House in 2008.

    Obama has alienated a solid 20 million members of the Democratic Party.

    Obama has even made the Republicans look good, which is a miracle beyond the mind of God.

    • Mary

      Don’t let the bamboozlers tell you Obama won by running a “brilliant campaign.”

      Obama WON because the RBC gave him 4 of Hillary’s delegates to be “fair,” and because the superdelegates chose him.

      I remember a time when Donna Brazille said she’d resign if the superdelegates made the decision, don’t you?

  • MikeB

    First things first – GET RID OF DEAN.

    Obama has to be defeated in 2008 before we can get rid of Dean. His defeat will discredit Dean and the liberal elite which has hijacked the Democratic party.

    Obama’s coalition is the McGovern colation. These people were discredited after McGovern’s landslide defeat in 1972. Democrats need a similar defeat to lean their lesson.

    • Mary

      Latest Gallup shows Obama has already lost his bounce. He’s moving down, and is now only 3 points ahead.

      And that’s BEFORE the 527′s begin.

  • MikeB

    The MSM built him up like the he is the second coming and I have a gut feeling thay are going to rip him apart. Of course only after he is the “official” nominee.

    I agree completely. Corporate media’s goal was to eliminate all Dem candidates with a chance of winning. They want after Edwards with the haircut pseudo scandal. They portrayed him as fraud and a phony. They trashed the Clintons 24/7, calling them racists and every name in the book. All the while swooning over the Messiah, portraying him as the new Lincoln who was being attacked by the evil Clintons.

    They got what they wanted. They have eliminated all legitimate and qualified Dem candidates. Democratic party is stuck with an unqualified nominee with a closet chock full of skeletons. The media will start changing its tune. And without this media groupies Obama swooning over him Obama will be easily defeated in November.

  • Dan R.

    LMAO!!! That’s a terrific ad! And it’s just a sample of what the Republicans are gonna be able to throw at Obama over the next four months.

  • MikeB

    Obama Was A Key Player In Assembling And Passing The 2007 Ethics Reform Law,

    Is that the one that says politicians can wine and dine with lobbyists standing up but not sitting down?

    Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations.

    This guy is the Dem version of Bush. In over his head. Puffed up by an adoring media.

  • MikeB

    So, Clinton’s record-breaking earmarks for defense contractors aren’t a problem for you at all?

    No, those earmarks created jobs for working class people in the state of NY. You know the kind of people who are bitter and cling to their guns and religion?

    Hillary was not funnelling money to racists. She was helping the working class constituents who elected her. She has worked her ass off as a senator to help the people of NY. The kind of people the limousine liberals have nothing but contempt for.

    • Mary

      As a non-racist, I RESENT that Barak Obama made sure my tax dollars went to Father Pleger.

      I want that money RETURNED to the US treasury.

  • Poor White

    Whatever said and done. BO made more than $2.5 last year and is set to make atleast $10M this year and many more next year. (This is all legal money)

    I am sure he is pocketing many more through Axelrod.

  • Nobamadem

    From a 12/07 Salon article by Joe Conasen

    “Doubts about Barack Obama’s presidential credentials have crystallized during the past two weeks over his stewardship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on European Affairs, which has convened no policy hearings since he took over as its chairman last January.”

    This guy is a poseur extraordinaire or a complete slackard.

    • Mary

      NOt to mention the fact that he never even VISITED any of the foreign leaders he should know to run the Subcommittee on European Affairs. None of them have ever met him, and they RESENT that he snubbed them.

      Too busy getting his presidential campaign off the ground to do the job he was really supposed to do.

  • catherine

    I am glad he is going to place a tax on those families making over $250, 000. I’ll bet many of these families are the parents who are paying for the donations to BO made by the college kids who have the means to be out there volunteering for Obama all primary season and summer. Let them pay- they seem to have the money to support Obama’s campaign. I hope both the college kids and the parents like BO’s plan.

  • Odinga/Obama Dream Ticket

    Now, boys and girls, wasn’t Uncle Jeremiah NOT wrong when he said at he NPC:

    “Barack’s just another typical politician…he’ll say anything…and will do anything to get to where he wants”….

    20 years at the Church of Hate and he didn’t start a conversation with his congregation or give a Speech about Unity, Love and Healing! No, he gave the Speech to the rest of us fools, 20 years later–only to save his own political skin….yup! That’s Change we can believe in!

  • mary2

    Why did Obama give $100,000 to his Marxist-islamist Cousin Odinga in Kenya last year when he spent weeks campaigning with Dick Morris? When he knew or ought to have known that Odinga (then Opposition leader) had signed Memo of Understanding with Islamist organizations in this formerly Christian, democratic country to instal SHARIA LAW and ‘chastity provisions’ including burquas for all girls and women in universities. In December Odinga’s murderous thugs (with Barack’s money!) raped villages and burned 50 churches–and Barack asked Condi Rice to write a Speech (what else!) of Unity and Healing for Kenyans, 500,000 of whom his cousin made homeless!

    Dream Ticket?
    Obama for Odinga’s V-P
    Kenya ’08

  • indypol

    Brazille once said that there will be blood if Obama is not the nominee, a thinly veiled threat of violence at the convention if there ever was one. Well, given Obama’s horrible numbers with independents and moderates in the swing states, it is now clear that not will he lose the presidency, but he could take the Senate (one vote lead), and a good chunk of 2006 democratic freshman congressman with him. When that happens, the blood will belong to him (he’ll could his 2010 re-election bid), as well as Dean, Reid (as senate majority leader), and hopefully Brazille.

    Oh, and good-bye to Roe. I don’t think that Justice Stevens is going to wait for the Democrats to get their act together in 2012.

    Hillary ’08

    Enjoy the sweet aroma of Obama’s slow disintegration every morning. It will smell like … change!

  • Odinga’s v-p

    An Third (3rd) accomplishment by Sen. Obama:

    Promoted and passed into legislation by his cousin marxist Islamist president Odinga of Kenya ( to whom he donated $100,000 last year!):

    Sharia law provisions for women and Children
    Chastity covers provisions
    Burquas/full cover provisions for girls in
    Kenya’s universities
    500,000 Homeless internal Refugees in KENYA since his cousin Odinga’s gangs rebelled Dec. ’07

    Thank you Sen. Obama
    From Kenya’s Women and Children Refugees and Rape Victims.

  • StrawberrybitesBarky

    Cut and paste much? Just provide a link next time.

  • typical irishman

    Obama passed gas

  • PragmatismRules

    this is major SPAM

  • alee21

    Fabrication is easy; providing actual documentation is harder. Next time, link to government sites that support your contentions.

    If you gobble up everything Obama dishes out, you’ll get indigestion.

  • typical irishman

    and the cult swooned

  • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

    No wonder why so many faint during his rallys

  • Mary

    It’s they do: cut and paste.

    But ask them in their own words, what he has achieved or what he stands for…..

    They don’t have a clue.

  • cynthiab

    Wow, what a inane comment in response to a well researched history of the man’s significant accomplishments.

    By the way, in your own words, what has hillary done?

  • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

    Obama himself does not know what he stands for. He flip flops more than the pancakes at a church fund raiser.

  • typical irishman

    She has acted like a real American and not like an anti American radical as opposed to the way Obama has lived his life.

  • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

    Are you calling cutting and pasting from O’boys web site “well researched”?

    Is this cutting and pasting by Obots their “Own Words”?

    Is that the standard they use in schools these days? Just copy someone elses writing? (jeremiah wrighting)

    Naw… It’s just the example O’boy sets with his mahvolust speeches….

    O’boy copied Hillary, MLK, Malcom X, JFK, and anybody that could sound like proper pandering to his audience of the day…

    Come on, say one thing original.. I dare ya!

  • Mandelay

    LOL!!!!! You dipped into the propaganda machine soup, but we’re eating from another buffet at this blog.

  • StrawberrybitesBarky

    Cynthia, sweetheart…(sigh) let’s have a chat, shall we? You do know that you’re not the first pro barky person to come here to No Quarter, right? We get hundreds of you everyday spouting the same cut and paste argument…let me repeat that so it sinks in…the exact same friggin’ one! Do you know how may times every one of us regulars have disputed and cited our arguments only to be called racist or stupid, bitter, uneducated. Frankly I’m bored with the likes of you. Everyone of barky’s accomplshments that you cut and pasted to has been debunked many times over and Hillary’s many accomplishments have been listed over and over as well. You’re nothing new, or clever, or even interesting. You don’t even rise to the level of annoying anymore. You’re about as convincing as the 28%ers still supporting Bush and just about as angry.

  • Mary

    I didn’t even read it.

    Until they can write their own paragraph and describe same, it’s just cut and paste with no comprehension.

    Obama needs better trolls.

  • cynthiab

    Really. Obama took a low paying job in the poor community in Chicago after graduating harvard law. He could have commanded six figures. He was in hock up to his eyeballs with school loans at the time.

    Mrs. Clinton chose instead to work in corporate law and represented Walmart.

    She admitted that she has no problem taking money from lobbyists…that they work for “ordinary people”…

    She voted for the IWR and never said she made a mistake. She voted for kyl/lieberman, giving bush the authority he needs to attack iran from inside iraq. She lied about bosnia, she mismanged her campaign.

    her accomplishment list for her alleged “experience” is short.
    She has no more “experience” that Obama and her judgment when it counted was dead wrong.

    And by the way, Obama was 8 when Ayers was a radical. EIGHT. He served on a board with a man who is a professor at a university… Yes, that is Mr. Ayers.

    Wow…that vitriol and nonsense that is spewed here is just beneath contempt. Thank god you are the fringe.

    I hear Bob Barr would be a great candidate for all of you to support.

  • cynthiab

    Tell me what Hillary has accomplished? Come on? Where is your list?

    Since you think she has so much more experience than Obama… lets here it?

  • Mary

    Mr. Obama is a PRODUCT of the corrupt Chicago political machine, darlin.

    It appears you’re the only one on the board who is too poorly informed to know that.

  • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

    Nah… We are good with McCain… But your suggestion is duly noted!

  • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

    Nah… We are good with McCain… After all, John Kerry asked McCain to be his VP in 2004… But your suggestion is duly noted!

  • Mary

    That’s spelled “hear,” not “here,” Cynthia.

    Bless her heart. :)

  • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

    Senator Clinton worked with Democrats and Republicans to secure the funds New York needed to rebuild following the attack on the world trade center.

    She fought to provide compensation to the families of the victims, grants for hard-hit businesses, and health care for front line workers at Ground Zero.

    Following the attack on the world trade center OBAMA and his church played the BLAME AMERICA game.

    Hillary introduced legislation for resources to protect all Americans from future attacks, and to provide for direct and threat-based homeland security funding to ensure that first responders and high-target communities have the resources they need.

    This is opposed by current DHS policy that gives aid in pork barrel fashion to communities that are not high profile, high targets.

    Hillary led efforts in the senate to ensure the safety of prescription drugs for children, with legislation included in the Pediatric Research Equity Act; strengthened the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which increased coverage for children in low income working families; and helping schools address environmental hazards.

    Hillary authored legislation that has been enacted to improve recruitment and retention of nurses, to improve quality and lower the cost of prescription drugs, and to protect our food supply from bioterrorism.

    Hillary is leading the fight for Universal Healthcare and expanded use of information technology in the health care system to decrease administrative costs and reduce medical errors.

    Hillary is an original sponsor of legislation that expanded health benefits to members of the National Guard and Reserves.

    Senator Clinton co-sponsored legislation enacted in 2004 to extend tax credits to communities in regions designated as Renewal Communities. This would include Obama the neighborhood around Obama’s southside Chicago Church.

    To see the voluminous number of bills Senator Clinton has sponsored and Co-Sponsored in the 107th, 108th, and 109th Congresses visit the link here: http://clinton.senate.gov/senate/legislation/

  • http://nobho.blogspot.com/ Johnny at Work

    Another reason why people pass out at his speeches.

  • StrawberrybitesBarky

    Mary, Hahahahahhah. ‘Bless your heart’. Someone from the south once told me that it means a polite way of saying someone is a dumbass. (SNICKER)