I could not resist running this photo. I believe the man on the right needs no introduction. The guy on the left: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright. That’s the former pastor of Barack Obama’s church who the right wingers are using the scare Democrats into voting for Hillary Clinton, who the GOP thinks will be easier to beat in the general election.
Posts Tagged ‘Barack Obama’
News: Chickens coming home to roost
Friday, March 21st, 2008Tags: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jeremiah Wright
Posted in The Wire | 19 Comments »
Today’s 6 links: A little tolerance, anyone?
Saturday, March 15th, 2008As I get ready for tomorrow’s Peoria Pundit Radio Show (6 p.m., listen here, call in at (347) 326-9459), I thought’s I’d toss together six links to keep readers occupied. I’m planning to talk about litter, but ANY subject is likely to come up:
- Remember Sally Kern, that Oklahoma state legislator who said homosexuals are worse than terrorists? Well, here’s a reply from the son of one of the 168 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing.
- If B.J. Stone’s head is about ready to explode now over high gasoline prices, I strongly suggest he not run out of gas in Gorda, Calif.
- The right-wing talkers on WMBD have been griping of late about how Barrack Obama has never answered questions (not to their satisfaction, anyway) about his relationship to indicted fundraiser Tony Rezko OR the controversy over comments made by the pastor at his church. Rich Miller links to information about extensive recent interviews Obama held with Chicago’s two major newspapersand with a piece Obama wrote about the pastor controversy.
- Meanwhile, Archpundit suggests that the people who embraced Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson have no business whining about the stupid things Jeremiah Wright says.
- C.J. Summers and I are having a little disagreement over Bradley University’s culpablity in the accidental construction of a building that doesn’t meet negotiated setback requirements. I’m sorry, but the city doesn’t play no-harm-no-foul with ordinary citizens, so why should it with B.U., or ANY politically-favored institution?
Tags: Barack Obama, Bradley University, Jeremiah Wright. homosexuality, Sally Kern
Posted in Local | 2 Comments »
Politics: Life getting more like television every day
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
Supposedly, the last season of “West Wing” is being played out in the 2008 Presidential race. It almost makes me wish I hadn’t stopped watching the show after Aaron Sorkin left so I’d know how this sucker is going to turn out.
Tags: Aaron Sorkin, Barack Obama, video, west wing
Posted in Statehouse & Capitol | Comments Off
Politcs: I am sooooo disappointed in Obama
Friday, February 29th, 2008Tags: Barack Obama, blogs, Lynn Sweet
Posted in Statehouse & Capitol | 2 Comments »
Politics: Now, if we can get voters to follow directions …
Monday, February 11th, 2008
Yeah, I know. It’s not fair. Nobody in South Carolina named their town “Obama.” At least not in the colonial period, when I am sure the good folks of Clinton picked their name. Lincoln, Ill., I am told, was named after old Honest Abe before he became president.
Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, road sign
Posted in Overset | Comments Off
Politics: Scarlett is the new Obama Girl
Monday, January 28th, 2008
According to the Associated Press, the lovely Miss Scarlett Johansson is a fan of Barack Obama. I mean, a realllly big fan:
Scarlett Johansson told Associated Press reporters, “I am engaged to Barack Obama.” As relayed by People, the statement was an obvious dodge of a question about whether Johansson is engaged to current romantic interest Ryan Reynolds.
Michelle Obama is either a very understanding woman. Or Barack is going to get an earful.
This is certainly a good week for Obama. First he gets an endorsement from not one, but TWO Kennedys. Then, he finds out that America’s hottest young actress thinks he’s all that. I wonder which development put the bigger smile on his face?
Tags: Barack Obama, Scarlett Johnsson
Posted in Statehouse & Capitol | 2 Comments »
Politics: ‘It’s not about race,’ Obama says
Sunday, January 27th, 2008
And this CNN commentator says Obama is forming a huge coalition:
And on the lighter side:
Tags: Barack Obama, YouTube
Posted in Overset | Comments Off
Politics:Everything you wanted to know about Obama and Tony Rezko
Thursday, January 24th, 2008I watched Hillary Clinton evoke the name of Tony Rezko during the debate in which she and Barack Obama got down and dirty. Yeah. THAT Hillary Clinton.
Archpundit has a primer here.
Tags: Barack Obama, Tony Rezko
Posted in Statehouse & Capitol | 1 Comment »
Politics: A free pass for Obama? Hardly …
Wednesday, January 23rd, 2008The pundits have been claiming that Barack Obama hasn’t been fully “vetted” by the press. Rich Miller looks at the facts and found that Obama’s home-state press has looked very deeply into his background, and so far they haven’t found much. No doubt that the Clinton crowd and right-wing radio will still spread this idea, because they assume that anyone with any success in politics has to be as dirty as they are.
Tags: Barack Obama, Rich Miller, The Capitol Fax Blog
Posted in Statehouse & Capitol | 7 Comments »
Politics: A message to Ron Paul supporters
Monday, January 14th, 2008Try to see past Ron Paul’s message of the day. Yes, he’s anti war. Yes, he’s anti tax. Yes, he’s (nominally) for the rights of the individual.
But look into his background. And look into the background of his most ardent, long-time supporters. You will see a history of racism, homophobia and paranoia.
I’ve written about Paul’s admitted love for the Confederacy (the belief that Lincoln was a tyrant and that the North should have just bought the slaves their freedom). I’ve mentioned the racist newsletters that bore his name.
This well-researched article in the New Republic traces Paul’s racist brand of libertarianism to the Ludwig von Mises institute (which is named after a great libertarian thinker, but one who had nothing to do with the institute) :
The people surrounding the von Mises Institute–including Paul–may describe themselves as libertarians, but they are nothing like the urbane libertarians who staff the Cato Institute or the libertines at Reason magazine. Instead, they represent a strain of right-wing libertarianism that views the Civil War as a catastrophic turning point in American history–the moment when a tyrannical federal government established its supremacy over the states. As one prominent Washington libertarian told me, “There are too many libertarians in this country … who, because they are attracted to the great books of Mises, … find their way to the Mises Institute and then are told that a defense of the Confederacy is part of libertarian thought.”
Many of the young Paul supporters I meet say that they also are attracted to the candidacy of Barack Obama. It seems they see in Obama some of what they see on Paul: A candidate who’s a bit of an outsider who can bring change to a corrupt system. And therein lies the irony: Paul would prefer to live in a world in which the slaves were not freed by force, even if if means Barack Obama would be a picking cotton in chains in South Carolina, and not running for president. I’m not buying Paul’s contention that he had no idea that these newsletters that bore his name contained all this racism.
If any other Republican or Democratic candidate had this racist baggage, I’d be all over him. I’ll do no different for a man who slaps the tag “libertarian” on himself. I’m not so starved for a libertarian approach to governance that I’ll risk putting a damn neo-Confederate in office.
Character is more important in a president than political philosophy. Paul doesn’t qualify. That’s why I’ll probably be voting for Barack Obama or John McCain, assuming either one wins their party’s primary.
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, New Republic, Ron Paul
Posted in Statehouse & Capitol | 7 Comments »
Politics: New Hampshire recount illustrates weakness of electronic voting
Friday, January 11th, 2008I’ve never been sold on the idea of replacing reliable paper-based ballots with electronic voting. While there has always been cheating with paper ballots, it cheating that has to be done by hand, and there usually has to be some sort of conspiracy for it to be successful. Electronic voting can be hacked remotely, or in advance of the elections. And nothing that election judges or observers at the scene can do to prevent it. And detecting it after the fact requires trusting the very same vendors who have a stake in NOT admitting anything wrong happened in the first place.
Consider this entry from The Caucus, the New York Times Politics Blog:
Just three days after Tuesday’s primary election, the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s office says it will conduct a hand recount of the votes in both the Republican and Democratic primaries starting next Wednesday after receiving formal requests from two candidates this week.
On Friday, Albert Howard, an obscure candidate from Ann Arbor, Mich., who appeared on the Republican ballot and received 44 votes in the primary, hand-delivered his recount request and a down payment of $2,000 to the statehouse in Concord, N.H.
And Dennis Kucinich, an Ohio Congressman and presidential candidate, sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of the Democratic ballots. Mr. Kucinich’s letter cited “unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.â€
The recount is based on concern that in counties when paper ballots were used, Barack Obama seemed to come out ahead. When electronic voting was used (with machines considered very hackable), then Hillary Clinton won.
Meanwhile, Brad Blog recounts statements about the polling data made on the Chris Matthews Show on MSNBC:
MATTHEWS: So what accounts for Hillary Clinton’s victory in New Hampshire? What we don’t know is why the victory is so much different in fact, then the polling ahead of time, including what we call the Exit Polls were telling us. Obama was ahead in those polls by an average of 8 points, and even our own Exit Polls, taken as people came out of voting, showed him ahead. So what’s going on here?
Brad himself comments:
“Why were the polls taken, of people coming out of the booth, so off?,” Matthews tries to ask his guests again and again. And again.
All of them twisted and turned and contorted and grappled and speculated, coming up with every possible unverifiable, backwards-engineered explanation, save for the one that must not be named. The 600 lb. canary in the virtual living room…the fact that no human being has bothered to check what was actually on NH’s vast majority of ballots (80%) which were “counted” by error-prone, hackable Diebold optical-scan machines, all controlled by one bad, horribly irresponsible private company, who has no business being anywhere near a public election…
I don’t really think Hillary Clinton hacked these voting machines. But a recount can only shed some light on what did happen. It needs to be done, and done calmly without all the posturing and court battles that happened in 2000.
UPDATE: Brad Carter points out the history of problems with the machines used in Peoria County.
Tags: Barack Obama, electronic voting, Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire primary
Posted in Statehouse & Capitol | 4 Comments »
Politics: Another good reason to support Barack Obama
Friday, January 11th, 2008The reason: Roseanne Barr hates Barack. Of course, the fact that Oprah endorses Barack kinda makes me want to vote for, well, someone else. But Roseanne is far more annoying. Of course, if Rosie O’Donnell comes out for Barack, I might have to vote Green.
Whew! Thank goodness we have celebrities to tell us how to feel about candidates.
Tags: Barack Obama, oprah, Roseanne Barr
Posted in Statehouse & Capitol | 5 Comments »
Politics: Clinton pulls an upset … or did she hack the vote?
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
The polls have been wrong before.
Not only does Hillary Clinton’s narrow victory in the New Hampshire primary run contrary to polls conducted by the media and by the candidates themselves, they also seem to run contrary to exit polling.
So … either all the polls were wrong, or Sen. Clinton’s crying acts convinced enough voters she was a human being after all and caused a 15 percentage point swing in the from one day to the next.
Or, as this anti-electronic voting blogger suggests, there’s something fishy going on:
While I have no evidence at this time — let me repeat, no evidence at this time — of chicanery, what we do know is that chicanery, with this particular voting system, is not particularly difficult. Particularly when one private — and a less than respectable one at that, as I detailed in the previous post — runs the entire process.
I should also note that some 40% of New Hampshire’s precincts are hand-counted, which equals about 25% of the votes. I’ve just spoken to Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org who seems to share my concern, as have other folks who follow this sort of thing. Harris noted that it will be interesting to compare numbers of the hand-counted precincts with those counted on the hackable Diebold op-scan systems.
Tags: Barack Obama, Diebold, exit polls, Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire, polls
Posted in Overset | 39 Comments »
Politics: Clinton quitting? That’s wishful thinking
Monday, January 7th, 2008Via Drudge:
Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?!
“She can’t take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada,” laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. “If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn’t want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats.”
Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary “could soon be out.”
“Her money is going to dry up,” Edwards confided, a top source said Monday morning.
MORE
Key players in Clinton’s inner circle are said to be split. James Carville is urging her to fight it out through at least February and Super Tuesday, where she has a shot at thwarting Barack Obama in a big state.
“She did not work this hard to get out after one state! All this talk is nonsense,” said one top adviser.
But others close to the former first lady now see no possible road to victory, sources claim. executive.]
Oh, bull. She lost ONE primary. She’s almost certain to loose New Hampshire. But there are a lot of primaries coming up. Granted, it doesn’t look good. But then, I’m not one of the people who thought she was inevitible anyway.
I never cease to be amazed at how fickle the media is. She was inevitable two weeks ago. Now, Obama is inevitible. We’re still in the first inning, people. Anything can happen between now and the convention, and I never underestimate how low the Clintonistas will sink.
And if I were a Republican, I wouldn’t be chortling about not having to run against Hillary Clinton. As it’s become apparent, there are a lot of people who don’t like her after all, so maybe she’s the candidate the GOP really wants to face. I’m sure there’s a big section of the GOP cannot see America voting for a black guy whose middle name is Hussein. But these are people who probably were goign to vote for the GOp candidate anyway.
I’d hate to think Drudge is trying to create news to boost his mojo.
Tags: Barack Obama, Drudge, Hillary Clinton
Posted in Overset | 1 Comment »
Politics: Barack isn’t black enough?
Sunday, December 9th, 2007This is what Hillary Clinton supporter Andrew Young says about Barack Obama:
Civil rights icon Andrew Young says Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is too young and lacks the support network to ascend to the White House.
In a media interview posted online, Young also quipped that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has her husband behind her, and that “Bill is every bit as black as Barack.”
“He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack,” Young said of former President Clinton, drawing laughter from a live television audience. Young, 75, was quick to follow his comment on Bill Clinton with the disclaimer, “I’m clowning.”
He says that America isn’t ready yet for a black president. Really? I’d say that America is ready for a black president when it, you know, elects a black person to be president. I’d say that Mr. Young is quite happy with the way things are now.
Tags: Andrew Young, Barack Obama
Posted in Overset | 2 Comments »




