Saturday, May 17, 2008
The General Begins
Obama Responds To Bush, McCain Appeasement Attack
WATERTOWN, S.D. — Barack Obama laid into John McCain on Friday for advancing a tough-guy foreign policy that he called "naive and irresponsible," serving notice that he's ready to launch a full-throttle challenge to the Republican presidential contender on international relations in the general election campaign.
Lumping McCain together with President Bush, Obama declared: "If they want a debate about protecting the United States of America, that's a debate I'm ready to win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for." He blamed Bush for policies that enhance the strength of terrorist groups such as Hamas and "the fact that al-Qaida's leadership is stronger than ever because we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan," among other failings.
McCain agreed, at least, that there were huge differences between himself and Obama on foreign policy, and said he'd be happy to let the American people decide who was right.
"It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don't have enemies. But that's not the world we live in. And until Senator Obama understands that reality, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment and determination to keep us safe," McCain said in a speech to the National Rifle Association in Louisville, Ky.
McCain rejected the naive comment, saying Obama should have known better, and added: "Talking, not even with soaring rhetoric, in unconditional meetings with the man who calls Israel 'a stinking corpse,' and arms terrorists who kill Americans, will not convince Iran to give up its nuclear program. It is reckless. It is reckless to suggest that unconditional neetings will advance our interests."
His campaign issued a statement accusing Obama of making a "hysterical diatribe."
The three-way dustup over foreign policy _ Bush vs. Obama vs. McCain _ began a day earlier, when Bush gave a speech to the Israeli Knesset in which he criticized those who believe the United States should negotiate with terrorists and radicals. Obama said Bush's criticism was directed at him, and took umbrage; the White House denied the president had Obama in mind; McCain said Obama must explain why he wants to talk with rogue leaders.
Obama continued the debate on Friday at a town-hall meeting in a livestock barn. He said he had planned to focus on rural issues during his swing through South Dakota, but felt compelled to answer the remarks from Bush and McCain.
"I'm a strong believer in civility and I'm a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy, but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort that we've seen out of George Bush and John McCain over the last couple days," he said.
Obama said McCain had a "naive and irresponsible belief that tough talk from Washington will somehow cause Iran to give up its nuclear program and support for terrorism."
Speaking of McCain and Bush together, he added: "They aren't telling you the truth. They are trying to fool you and scare you because they can't win a foreign policy debate on the merits. But it's not going to work. Not this time, not this year."
Obama vowed to turn the foreign policy debate back against Bush and McCain, rejecting the notion that Democrats critical of the war in Iraq are vulnerable to charges of being soft on terrorism. Meeting with reporters, he argued that tough-minded diplomacy and engagement with rivals have long coexisted, citing the foreign policies of former Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan.
"That has been the history of U.S. diplomacy until very recently," Obama said. "I find it puzzling that we view this as in any way controversial. This whole notion of not talking to people, it didn't hold in the '60s, it didn't hold in the '70s ... When Kennedy met with (Soviet leader Nikita) Khrushchev, we were on the brink of nuclear war."
He also noted that Nixon opened talks with China with the knowledge that Chinese leader Mao Zedong "had exterminated millions of people."
Laying down a marker for the fall campaign, Obama offered a challenge to the GOP nominee: "If John McCain wants to meet me anywhere, any time to have a debate about our respective policies ... that is a conversation I am happy to have."
Other Democrats accused McCain of hypocrisy Friday, saying the certain GOP presidential nominee had previously said he would be willing to negotiate with the militant Palestinian group Hamas.
McCain told reporters in West Virginia: "I made it very clear, at that time, before and after, that we will not negotiate with terrorist organizations, that Hamas would have to abandon their terrorism, their advocacy to the extermination of the state of Israel, and be willing to negotiate in a way that recognizes the right of the state of Israel and abandons their terrorist position and advocacy."
McCain said there was a "huge difference" between his own statements and Obama's willingness to negotiate with "sponsors of terrorist organizations."
"I'll let the American people decide whether that's a significant difference or not," he said. "I believe it is."
Obama said he has stated "over and over again that I will not negotiate with terrorists like Hamas."
Obama closed out his campaign day with a noisy rally in Sioux Falls before about 6,500 cheering backers, perhaps showing some of the strain of a long campaign day. "Thank you Sioux City," Obama said, as a roar greeted his entrance. He quickly corrected his reference to a nearby Iowa town.
"I've been in Iowa too long," said Obama, referring to his long campaign to win that state's leadoff caucuses in January.
___
Associated Press writer Glen Johnson in Louisville, Ky., contributed to this report.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Sacrificing for the Nation
Bush: I Gave Up Golf For The Troops
The Huffington Post | May 13, 2008 06:30 PM
As violence in Iraq continues -- clashes today left 11 dead and 19 injured -- President Bush has for the first time revealed the great sacrifice he's made for the sake of our soldiers: he's given up golf.
From an interview with Politico and Yahoo News:
"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."
Bush said he made that decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello, the top U.N. official in Iraq and the organization's high commissioner for human rights."I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life," he said. "I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, 'It's just not worth it anymore to do.'"
Rough Neighborhood
Looks as though we have a new neighbor.
Nice house, but like they say, LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION.
Barring a cyclone, tornado, earthquake or summer breeze for that matter, all should be well.
I'm sure everything will be just fine....
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Toasted
Campaign Desk
Russert Watch 4-12-08
In Which Hillary Surrogates Get Got
By Todd Gitlin Mon 12 May 2008 02:30 PMWhat’s a Sunday morning show to do when it specializes in political prophecy and the expectation is a foregone conclusion? Bring some players on, ask them routine questions, register their spin, try to trip them up when the spin is ridiculous, and move on.
By all conventional measures, the news is that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is sinking beneath the weight of arithmetic. Senator Chris Dodd, an Obama supporter, came on Meet the Press and said so, and since the arithmetic is on his side, he didn’t present any trip-up potential. Clinton proxy Terry McAuliffe, on the other hand, crammed himself into the absurd position of sticking up for the remote possibility of a game-changing event that could resurrect the expiring Clinton campaign. When he plumped for counting the Michigan votes in a primary where Obama’s name was not on the ballot, all McAuliffe could summon up in support of that argument was to insist that Obama had taken himself off the Michigan ballot. Russert countered with a passage from McAuliffe’s own book insisting that when it comes to the way the party chooses its delegates, “The rules are the rules.”
This is the sort of gotcha moment where Russert’s research staff excels, and McAuliffe must have known it. Russert offered no more than a perfunctory nod in the face of McAuliffe’s feeble prayer—for a bolt from the blue—he offered the pathetic historical precedent of a onetime come-from-behind victory by (surprise!) the Buffalo Bills. Nice try but no cigar.
The other morning “issue” was Clinton’s maladroit remark May 8 about “white Americans.” She referred to an Associated Press poll “that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.” Russert confronted McAuliffe with the thunderous objections from her supporter, Representative Charlie Rangel, and from The New York Times’s Bob Herbert, in the Saturday paper, charging her with arousing white West Virginia voters to see her as their champion and, in effect, to vote their race prejudice. Curiously, thrust into a corner, a possibly ill-briefed McAuliffe scrounged around but scraped up nothing but boilerplate to toss back.
He could have offered a defense to the effect that Clinton garbled her words. It could have been argued—myself, I’d be inclined to argue—that Clinton meant to say two distinct and true things, and erred when she crammed them into a single sentence: first, that she does better than Obama so far among white working-class voters; and second, that working class Americans are “hard-working.” This benign interpretation would hold that she was merely pandering-as-usual, though even so, this sort of constituency-calculating is the sort of thing that a candidate best leave to journalists and academics. It’s her business to present herself as potential president of all the people, not a slicer and dicer of factions. But I can’t believe that she was impugning black voters for not being “hard-working.”
Well, it’s not Russert’s job to untangle a candidate’s garbled syntax. (On the Stephanopoulos show, Harry Reid stumbled around trying to cast a rosier light on her words and then flatly gave up.) If she gaffes it up so badly that her surrogates can’t put out the fire, then maybe she’s not just “TOAST,” as the New York Post screamed last week, but burnt toast.
- Columbia Journalism Review 08
Monday, May 12, 2008
Happy Birthday Jeff!!!
Dinner with the Birthday Boy.. Ruth's Chris, Ummmmm.....
Brownies as a appetizer, what a concept!
Actually, Everyone was happy.. except for the Cow.
DELICIOUS!!
The Waiter, Brian, was a case. Not sure why, but he had a penchant for Card Tricks and racial whispers during dinner, neither of which were very good. Can't say I have ever had a waiter do that as I ate, and in the state I was in, I had no idea what his true motives were.
And the evening ended on just the right note. We introduced Jeff to AbFab... All so Fitting!
So good to have you as a friend.. Love you Jeff!!
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Friday, May 9, 2008
ANOTHER Great Idea...
He is my Beautiful Man with the mind... me, I'm just here for entertainment purposes, having lost my mind years ago.
Love You Jim!!
MIKE GLOVER | May 16, 2008 11:36 PM EST |
Compare and versions