The Work Horse vs. The Show Horse

Go Susan.

Now let the Hill smears begin.

Ugh.

The endless pathetic spinning for Clinton is now officially old, and I’m done. Larry Johnson can’t save you - begone from my Google Reader.

And enjoy watching Hillary crash and burn.

Obama damned with George Will’s praise!
And if he starts sounding too much like Edwards, how long before Bloomberg dominates the media?
The wealthy and powerful have their own saviors.

I have never seen the power elites in the media and the Republicans push a candidate with such fervor as they are pushing Obama.

It makes no difference to me why they are doing so. The very fact that they are tells me more than I need to know about this charismatic but woefully unqualified man.

For the last couple years the media-right has been talking about Hillary as if she was the only possibility. I know people like Dick Morris and several others have careers built around Hillary-hating, and will have to do their research all over again if a Clinton isn’t elected in 2008.

I think you all weren’t paying attention in 2004 if you think this is unique. For months before Christmas Fox was calling Dean a “phenomenon” and many other positive things for his internet presence. Then they switched to Kerry, calling him “electable,” if I remember correctly, before anyone else.

Rupert Murdoch’s history with this practice goes back decades, at least as far as his support for Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke in the mid-late 1970s in Australia. Although technically in the Labor party, he was one of your Blair (Sky News) or Bill Clinton “third way” lefties who wouldn’t rock the boat, and sometimes provide cover for a right’ish agenda.

Starting to see Obama as opportunity cost. Not in a long time has the public coalesced around resentment toward corporate greed, cronyism, health insurance companies.

If we elect Obama we’ll all feel good but that reform won’t happen. He’s not a high-energy guy and it’s just his nature to shy away from upsetting people.

Either of the other two candidates will act and move toward reform. And the public sentiment will support that reform. By the end of eight Obama years, that public sentiment may be gone. He’ll placate us just enough for it to disappear.

Hillary Clinton works hard for Hillary Clinton and for the Marthas Vinyard and Hollywood money boys. She is the Democratic darling of the hedge fund/private equity and banking sector that along with Alan Grenspan let the economy go to hell while they raked in profits. Obama may not have Hillary’s experience but he’s not in the pocket of investment bankers.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/09/04/why-is-barack-obama-buying-into-white-house-framing-on-iran/

Why Is Barack Obama Buying Into White House Framing on Iran?
By: Nicole Belle on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 9:46 AM - PDT  

  This headline made my heart sink:

“HIT IRAN WHERE IT HURTS

Democratic presidential hopeful takes a get-tough stance against tyrant of Tehran

By BARACK OBAMA

Americans need to come together to confront the challenge posed by Iran. Yet the Bush administration and an anonymous senator are blocking a bill with bipartisan support that would ratchet up the pressure on the Iranian regime. It’s time for this obstructionism to stop.

The decision to wage a misguided war in Iraq has substantially strengthened Iran, which now poses the greatest strategic challenge to U.S. interests in the Middle East in a generation. Iran supports violent groups and sectarian politics in Iraq, fuels terror and extremism across the Middle East and continues to make progress on its nuclear program in defiance of the international community. Meanwhile, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared that Israel must be ‘wiped off the map.’”
——————————————–

Hook, line and sinker.  He bought the whole thing.   Please, other than the increasingly hysterical rhetoric of the Bush White House (that is eerily similar–if not outright identical–to the 2001-2002 rhetoric against Saddam Hussein), why would Barack Obama believe that Iran is such a threat?  Given the past seven years, should Bush’s say so truly carry that much credibility?

In fairness to Obama, much of his op-ed is actually very critical of the Bush administration for their lack of diplomacy, but it hardly matters, because by accepting the Bush framing of a looming crisis against Iran, he’s given all the
Bush administration’s translation of Farsi, which as we’ve seen before, only has a glancing relationship with reality.

This is not to single out Obama either; all of the top tier candidates have tried to earn their “I’m not a wimpy Democrat but a strong leader” bona fides with tough talk against Iran. But this kind of talk is incredibly irresponsible and we–as the progressive community–MUST be clear with the Democratic contenders who are seeking our support that if they think the occupation in Iraq is going bad, any military actions against Iran would be like Iraq on steroids.  We’ve already seen how much damage a president with no understanding of the geo-political or cultural circumstances of an area can do.  We simply cannot afford another one.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=11438

August 14, 2007

Neolibs and Neocons,
United and Interchangeable by Philip Giraldi

“…Barack Obama is somewhat more enigmatic, but his recent ill-advised pledge to attack Pakistan if Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf does not do something about the Taliban and al-Qaeda shows that he is working hard to catch up. Obama’s key advisers who speak for him on foreign policy include Gregory Craig, Anthony Lake, and Samantha Power. Craig is a leading Washington lawyer who was a White House special counsel under Bill Clinton and defended the president in his impeachment trial. Lake was also a Bill Clinton adviser who was involved in the Bosnian conflict. Power is an Irish-born Harvard professor from the Kennedy School who is regarded as an expert on Third World issues. None of the three is considered to be particularly partisan on any foreign policy issues but genocide, which Power has written a book about,

but Obama is also accelerating his efforts to woo Jewish donors and to improve his standing with AIPAC, which has been suspicious of him because of youthful indiscretions that included expressions of sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians. He recently appointed Eric Lynn to develop an aggressive program of outreach to the Jewish community on his record of support for Israel, which he claims is unwavering.

Obama fully endorsed Israel’s invasion of Lebanon last year, and he has also cited his more recent sponsorship of the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of May 2007, another irresponsible piece of legislation by Congress that will increase the suffering of the Iranian people while doing nothing to change the country’s leadership. He has pledged that Iran will not be allowed to threaten Israel through its nuclear program, but he is vague on exactly what he would do to stop it….”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/16/2561/

Published on Monday, July 16, 2007 by ABC News

DESPITE RHETORIC, OBAMA PUSHED LOBBYISTS’ INTERESTS
by Justin Rood

Away from the bright lights and high-minded rhetoric of the campaign trail, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has quietly worked with corporate lobbyists to help pass breaks worth $12 million.

In his speeches, Obama has lambasted lobbyists and moneyed interests who “have turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.” 

“It’s an entire culture in Washington — some of it legal, some of it not,” the Democratic hopeful told a New York crowd in June, rallying support for his ethics reform agenda.

But last year, at the request of a hired representative for an Australian-owned chemical corporation Nufarm, Obama introduced nine separate bills exempting the company from import fees on a range of chemical ingredients it uses in the manufacture of pesticides and herbicides. Nufarm’s U.S. subsidiary is based in Illinois.

Nufarm wasn’t the only beneficiary of Obama’s efforts to reduce customs fees and duties. In early May of 2006, two Washington lobbyists registered to work on behalf of Astellas Pharma, a Japanese-owned drug company which also has offices in Illinois.

The lobbyists’ task? “Introduce legislation to temporarily suspend customs duties for the importation of a pharmaceutical ingredient,” they wrote on their lobbying forms. Less than three weeks later, the men had earned their $20,000 fee, thanks to Obama. On May 26, he introduced S. 3155, a bill specifically exempting Astellas’ key ingredient from tariff payments. The bill cost the federal government more than $1 million in lost revenue, according to government estimates.

Together, Obama’s obscure measures — known as tariff suspensions — steered more than $12 million away from federal coffers, according to government estimates.

A spokesman for the senator defended Obama’s efforts on behalf of the two firms……. more

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=20

Obama Lines Up Behind Neo-Conservative Campaign Against Iran

Neo-conservatives, some of whom have claimed to see hopeful glimmers in Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign-policy positions of the kind of interventionism that gets them excited , should be further heartened by the presidential hopeful’s sponsorship of a new bill that, if passed, is certain to increase tensions not only with Iran, but with Washington’s European allies as well.

The bill, the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act of 2007, would require the federal government to publish a list of U.S. overseas subsidiaries and foreign companies that have invested more than $20 million dollars in Iran’s energy sector. It would also authorize state and local governments to divest the assets of their pension and other funds from any company on that list and protect fund managers who divest from listed companies from lawsuits by investors unhappy with the results.

“The Iranian governments uses the billions of dollars it earns from its oil and gas industry to build its nuclear program and to fund terrorist groups that export its militaristic and radical ideology to Iraq and throughout the Middle East,” Obama said in a statement released by his office this week. “Pressuring companies to cut their financial ties with Iran is critical to ensuring that sanctions have their intended result.”

The bill, which was also introduced in the House of Representatives by Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Lantos and Financial Services chairman Barney Frank, is part of a much broader national divestment campaign spearheaded by some of the most hawkish neo-conservative groups, notably Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP); the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, as well as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). I wrote about the neo-con role in driving the divestment campaign last week.

Besides “naming and shaming” the countries to be listed, the bill is apparently designed to overcome potential constitutional challenges to Iran-related divestment bills – one of which was cleared by Florida’s legislature last month — that are currently being actively considered in about a dozen states. One such bill is expected to be introduced shortly in Obama’s home state of Illinois where a similar Sudan divestment law was ruled unconstitutional by a federal court earlier this year on the grounds that it interfered with the federal government’s ability to conduct foreign policy and regulate foreign trade. That decision was based largely on a unanimous 2000 Supreme Court ruling on selective-purchasing laws directed against companies doing business in Burma.

“Federal law should not stand in the way of investors or state and local governments who want to act on their own conviction about morality and American interests,” Frank said.

Acutely aware of public disenchantment with Iraq and opposition to an attack on Iran and convinced that the UN Security Council will never be willing to impose serious sanctions of its own, neo-conservatives, in apparent co-ordination with the right-wing “Israel Lobby,” have been trying for much of the past year to rally support for tougher unilateral economic sanctions, including divestment, against Iran. Determined to sabotage any move by ascendant “realists” in the Bush administration to seriously engage Tehran, they have depicted the unilateral sanctions as the logical middle ground between engagement and military action.

Among the various problems associated with unilateral sanctions, particularly those that attempt to extend U.S. law — it is illegal for U.S. companies to invest in Iran – to foreign entities, is that they tend to engender resentment overseas. Thus, not only will the Iranian leadership interpret divestment as a hostile act, but U.S. allies, particularly in Europe whose companies have the largest the largest investments in Iran, may become less, rather than more, inclined to cooperate with Washington in applying multilateral pressure on Tehran, be it at in the Security Council or in other forums. While that presents no particular problem to hard-line neo-conservatives who still favour attacking Iran if sanctions do not have the desired effect and who believe that Europeans are cynical or wimps or both, it should bring pause to those, like Obama, who have argued that Washington needs to be far more sensitive to the interests and concerns of other nations, particularly its closest allies, than it has under Bush.

Of course, in the context of domestic politics, Democratic presidential hopefuls like Obama are eager to show that, even as they join the growing clamor for an early withdrawal from Iraq and oppose war against Iran (while insisting, along with the administration, that all options should remain on the table), they remain “tough on Iran” – even if that could well make war before the end of Bush’s term more likely, rather than less.

That, of course, is not Obama’s calculation. In an interview this week with Israel’s Haaretz, Obama criticized the administration for not opening talks with Tehran earlier and praised the decision to finally begin bilateral talks with the Iranians on Iraq as a “step in the right direction” that may “establish a pattern of dialogue,” he also stressed that a nuclear Iran “will be a major threat to us …and one that we have to take seriously.” It is in that context, he explained that more pressure on the regime, including divestment and not taking the threat of military action off the table, was called for.

Nor is that calculation confined to the presidential candidates. In two votes in the House this week on the 2008 Defense Authorization bill, Democrats concerned that Bush may yet to resort to attacking Iran before his term in office expires came up short. An amendment introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio that would have required Bush to seek Congressional authorization for military action against Iran except in the case of a “national emergency created by an attack by Iran upon the United States, its territories, or possessions or its armed forces” was defeated 288-136. A second amendment, introduced by Rep. Robert Andrews, that would have barred funding for planning a “major contingency operation” in Iran, was defeated by a narrower margin – 216-202. The votes followed a threat from the White House to veto the pending bill if it included “provisions that would prevent the president from protecting America and allied and cooperating nations from threats posed by Iran.”

While all of these moves may serve, as many Democrats claim, to strengthen “moderates” in the Iranian regime and make it more inclined to meet U.S. and western demands to freeze its uranium enrichment program, they may just as well have the contrary result.

The Imaginary Obama. It’s because Obama has little of an actual record that people are flocking around him. Hillary, Edwards, etc. have made votes, take positions in actual fights and have a history that can be referenced, so people can pick a point to say “well, I don’t like what they did here so I’m not gonna support them.” Obama has no history so people can hold him up like a mirror of their own desires and needs and hero worship him accordingly.

In that sense, he’s just like Bush was to the Republicans in 2000: a mirror of their desires.

They are both better than the repugs. People. Get it together.

Hillary just has to concede that there is a bandwagon/clusterfuck mentality developing here, and write off the first few primaries. She can hope that given a month she and the press can generate enough doubts about Obama that people may ask themselves whether we really want to do this.

The thing is, when G. Will is endorsing a Dem, that means…………..RUN. It’s called a concern troll on the Internet. You wouldn’t trust George Bush’s chef to prepare Ahmadinejad’s food. You wouldn’t trust the Yankee GM to have veto power over the Red Sox roster moves………and if George Will is recommending a Democrat………………………..IGNORE HIM……….and I just wish the pundits would call him on it.

[...] Top 5 News & Blog results on {1} The Work Horse vs. The Show Horse: Shelby Steele, Karl Rove, RedState.com blog, Bill O?Reilly (who h… Andy McCarthy in the NRO Corner mentions something that I had only a…: In June 2007 the [...]

[...] is in the right place and i don’t doubt he will try if elected.  there are those who see hard work as more important than the showier rhetoric- and i fall into that category- but i would also throw in integrity- and i have a feeling mrs. [...]

I guess some of you don’t remember that Bill Clinton lost the first 6 primaries before he eventually won the nod.

It isn’t just the right who has short memories.

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