Jan Touney, Managing Editor of the Quad-City Times, talks to presidential candidate Barack Obama during an editorial board meeting.Intense, brilliant, serious discussion, not soundbytes, 10 min. video with poor lighting, no glitz - all content! Obama's the leader for our times, endorsed by heavyweights and not for his "pretty speeches"! Watch this video and you'll agree Obama is the leader we need, now.i
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CONCORD, N.H. - The Boston Globe reports from NH, with interviews from intellectuals from both sides of the aisle, all but one of whom admire Barack's intellect, common sense, honesty, and most are admiring of his activism as well. The one [Epstein] who says Obama is not an intellectual because he is an activist, shows he is still living in an ivy-league dichotomous-either/or world. In the real world, people are more complicated than that. How refreshing that we'll have an intellectual activist in the West Wing - and a sharp, pragmatic one at that, who knows how to get laws passed!
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Barack Obama addresses an Iowa voter's healthcare question at length: "She [HRC] has a mandate. And John Edwards has a mandate. Where the only way to get 100% coverage is if you pass a law where government forces everybody to buy insurance." Barack shows why it's a "phony argument" to claim 15 million won't buy insurance because they are young and don't want to pay premiums. Obama shows his plan mandates insurance companies to cover youth until age 25 under their parents' health insurance, whether the youth are in college or not (right now, health insurance corporations drop youths 18-25 as soon as they graduate or drop/stop out of college!). As Obama says, and I agree, people don't refuse to buy health insurance because they are lazy or irresponsible and need to be forced to (with what penalties, Hillary and John?). People want health insurance, as good as the Senators get, only affordably and to get full coverage, pre-existing condition or not, job or not. Right now inflation is in the high-double digits on insurance premiums, you don't know what or if you'll be covered after you pay a fortune, and you can get dropped for using it - just like an auto insurance corporation manages claims! We are more than vehicles, I would hope we get better insurance prices and policies without the mandates put on vehicles. And, btw, have you bought Uninsured Motorist Liability Coverage for your vehicle lately, even with those mandatory laws and penalties? So, mandates with penalties don't guarantee 100% coverage either, do they?
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All presidential choices come with risk. "Do you match up with the times?" Obama has said about an intangible ingredient necessary for the next president. We believe that Obama is like another candidate, a lightly experienced man from Illinois who burst upon the national scene in the midst of the country's greatest crisis in 1860. Abraham Lincoln matched up with his times. We believe the same of Barack Obama, and encourage voters to support him in the Democratic primary
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PORTSMOUTH — It all came full circle Thursday night as Illinois Sen. and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama returned to the Frank Jones Center.
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Thanks to SF Bay View - unlike most coverage of the protests of the demolition of New Orleans public housing tenements, which took developers' side in this fight, just as the NO City Council and infamous Mayor Nagin did. As Obama points out, there are 12,000 homeless in NO after the flood. There are also Bush appointees/contractors under investigation for kickbacks involved in these very demolitions! Obama could've stayed silent; the media's full of stories embedded in the protest "reports" claiming the poor are living large on public assistance in gentrified New Orleans (where the cost of living has gone up 45% since the flood). Barack 08 for Compassion With Common Sense
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Clinton's surrogates keep spreading the neo-con smear that Obama went to a radical Islamic school, which is why I will not vote for her, even though I'm a Green Democrat, if she gets the nomination. In a nutshell, I'm sick of bigotry as a tactic - divided we fall, and that's that! If Dixiecrat tactics are all the Democrats have to offer, my party deserves a fall - it can't survive that way, anyway. With Obama and the volunteers from all political parties and walks of life, I've learned my diversity is an asset to unite us. Continually raising a specter of Obama as an Islamic fundamentalist is as ludicrous as casting him as a Christian fundamentalist. He was taught in an Islamic, not Arab, school in Indonesia, not the Middle East or Iran, for 2 elementary-school years - he was also taught in a Catholic elementary school for 2 years. Obama is no more Islamic than he is Catholic! This non-issue has been debunked repeatedly, but here it is again, in case you think Hillary and her puppets (Bob Kerrey, anyone?) wouldn't lie: Describing attacks on Obama's elementary school, Klein wrote [in Jan. 07!], "Now, this is nonsense of course. Obama's stepfather was not a Muslim extremist (among other things, he worked for Shell Oil). Obama attended public school for two years in Indonesia, in addition to the two years he spent in Catholic schools--although, as Obama's staff points out, Indonesia is a Muslim country, so the public schools undoubtedly reflect the dominant religious culture. The notion that the Obama's school was a Wahabi madrasa is laughable, given the moderate form of Islam practiced in Indonesia, especially in those days." [Time Blog, 1/22/07]
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A great 3-page article: While a respected figure in Democratic circles, Paul Krugman's recent attacks on Barack Obama are wrong on history, wrong on politics, and wrong on what the future holds for Obama's "big table" idea. Krugman, a John Edwards supporter, has been drawing historical parallels which are "facile and ahistorical" when scrutinized. (by ShemDaimwood). My note: I've got to say that yes, Krugman's wrong, Obama's right, and I'm glad a great rebuttal came out. But notice how different attacks from Edwards' supporters are from Clinton-supporters'. Edwards just isn't honest - his voting record in one senate term was more conservative than any other Dem candidates' - but Hillary's team is malicious in the extreme. I lost some respect for Krugman's honesty, but he certainly hasn't raised my ire and disgust like Clinton's surrogates, with their covert ethnic smears that remind me more of neo-con Willie Horton tactics than any Democrat I'd be associated with!
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