Obama '08?

Although Wright himself has attempted to sow doubts that Obama actually disputes his nutty theories and assertions, I tend to believe Obama is sincere in his denouncement of the good reverend's rants.

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Although Wright himself has attempted to sow doubts that Obama actually disputes his nutty theories and assertions, I tend to believe Obama is sincere in his denouncement of the good reverend's rants.

I believe he will be as sincere as is politically expedient in the moment.

Finn thanks for yourt answer. Basically you are saying that The Rev Wright is

IRRELLAVANT when considering policy.
RELAVANT when judging if he truly is a transendant character.

If this is true, then just like the dimention of policy, this absence of racial transendance would have shown itself already in his career.

Like I said before, you're welcome to mudsling all you want about this Wright ordeal. If it isn't obvious to you already, it's not sticking.

If your claim is that Obama is unprepared etc, you're not making any ground by beating up his Pastor.

T
K
O

Obviously Obama is not advocating any policy or practice that coincides with the nonsense Wright has been spewing...

The issue that Wright has personified in this campaign is not whether or not Obama shares the belligerent and hateful paranoia of Wright, but whether he is truly the transcendent character upon which his entire campaign is based.

"Endorsing Obama" By Doug Kmiec

Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence, and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and that he wants to return the United States to that company of nations committed to human rights. I do not know if his earlier life experience is sufficient for the challenges of the presidency that lie ahead. I doubt we know this about any of the men or women we might select. It likely depends upon the serendipity of the events that cannot be foreseen. I do have confidence that the senator will cast his net widely in search of men and women of diverse, open-minded views and of superior intellectual qualities to assist him in the wide range of responsibilities that he must superintend.

This endorsement may be of little note or consequence, except perhaps that it comes from an unlikely source: namely, a former constitutional legal counsel to two Republican presidents. The endorsement will likely supply no strategic advantage equivalent to that represented by the very helpful accolades the senator has received from many of high stature and accomplishment, including most recently, from Gov. Bill Richardson. Nevertheless, it is important to be said publicly in a public forum in order that it be understood. It is not arrived at without careful thought and some difficulty.

As a Republican, I strongly wish to preserve traditional marriage not as a suspicion or denigration of my homosexual friends but as recognition of the significance of the procreative family as a building block of society. As a Republican and as a Catholic, I believe life begins at conception, and it is important for every life to be given sustenance and encouragement. As a Republican, I strongly believe that the Supreme Court of the United States must be fully dedicated to the rule of law and to the employ of a consistent method of interpretation that keeps the court within its limited judicial role. As a Republican, I believe problems are best resolved closest to their source and that we should never arrogate to a higher level of government that which can be more effectively and efficiently resolved below. As a Republican and a constitutional lawyer, I believe religious freedom does not mean religious separation or mindless exclusion from the public square.

In various ways, Sen. Barack Obama and I may disagree on aspects of these important fundamentals, but I am convinced, based upon his public pronouncements and his personal writing, that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view and, as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them.

No doubt some of my friends will see this as a matter of party or intellectual treachery. I regret that, and I respect their disagreement. But they will readily agree that as Republicans, we are first Americans. As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or a clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment. Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen.

Sept. 11 and the radical Islamic ideology that it represents is a continuing threat to our safety, and the next president must have the honesty to recognize that it, as author Paul Berman has written, "draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe and with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined. ... wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, then naïve observers might suppose." Sen. Obama needs to address this extremist movement with the same clarity and honesty with which he has addressed the topic of race in America. Effective criticism of the incumbent for diverting us from this task is a good start, but it is incomplete without a forthright outline of a commitment to undertake, with international partners, the formation of a worldwide entity that will track, detain, prosecute, convict, punish, and thereby stem radical Islam's threat to civil order. I await Sen. Obama's more extended thinking upon this vital subject as he accepts the nomination of his party and engages Sen. McCain in the general campaign discussion to come.
Published Sunday, March 23, 2008 9:18 AM
Filed under: Iraq, John McCain, Douglas W. Kmiec, Barack Obama, OLC, 9/11 plotters, speech, Roe, abortion, terrorism, rule of law

About Doug Kmiec

* Douglas W. Kmiec is Caruso Family Chair and Professor of Constitutional Law, Pepperdine University. He served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (U.S. Assistant Attorney General) for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Former Dean of the law school at The Catholic University of America, Professor Kmiec was a member of the law faculty for nearly two decades at the University of Notre Dame.

Clinton or McCain either of which are poor choices when compared to Obama as both have pandered to whatever which way the wind blows and Obama has not.

On July 28th, the day after his speech at the Democratic convention catapulted him into the national spotlight, Barack Obama told a group of reporters in Boston that the United States had an "absolute obligation" to remain in Iraq long enough to make it a success."The failure of the Iraqi state would be a disaster," he said at a lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, according to an audiotape of the session. "It would dishonor the 900-plus men and women who have already died. . . . It would be a betrayal of the promise that we made to the Iraqi people, and it would be hugely destabilizing from a national security perspective."In late winter, 2008, on the campaign trail, Obama says he wants to bring the troops home yesterday ?- you decide ?- was he lying then or is he lying now?

In his memoir, Obama writes of one of the watershed moments of his racial awareness ?- time and again in remarkable detail. It is a story about a Life magazine article that influenced him. The report was about a black man who tried to bleach his skin white. When Obama was told no such article could be found in Life, he says "it might have been Ebony.He is 9 years old, living in Indonesia, where he and his mother moved with her new husband, Lolo Soetoro, a few years earlier. One day while visiting his mother, who was working at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Obama passed time by looking through several issues of Life magazine. He came across an article that he later would describe as feeling like an "ambush attack."

The article included photos of a black man who had destroyed his skin with powerful chemical lighteners that promised to make him white. Instead, the chemicals had peeled off much of his skin, leaving him sad and scarred, Obama recalled.

"I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation," Obama wrote of the magazine photos in "Dreams."

Yet no such photo exists, according to historians at the magazine. No such photos, no such article. When asked about the discrepancy, Obama said in a recent interview, "It might have been an Ebony or it might have been … who knows what it was?" (At the request of the Tribune, archivists at Ebony searched their catalogue of past articles, none of which matched what Obama recalled.)

As another example, consider Obama's stirring tale for the Selma audience about how he had been conceived by his parents, Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham, because they had been inspired by the fervor following the "Bloody Sunday" voting rights demonstration that was commemorated March 4. "There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Ala.," he said, "because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Ala. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Ala."

Obama was born in 1961, and the Selma march occurred four years later, in 1965.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Early voting in Indiana could offer some encouragement to presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who needs a victory in its upcoming primary after a tough few weeks on the campaign trail.

Obama victories in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6 could help him regain momentum in his nomination fight against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama has been on the defensive because of comments by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and his own comments about people in small towns growing bitter.

About 20 percent of the 127,000-plus absentee ballots received as of early Friday were cast in three Indiana counties - Marion, Monroe and Lake - that political observers believe Obama is strongly favored to win.

Lake County has a large population of black voters and is in Chicago's shadow. Obama has typically won big among college-age voters, and Monroe County is the home of Indiana University in Bloomington. Obama's campaign sought out IU students with voter registration and early voting drives and a free Dave Matthews concert.

Robert Dion, a professor of American politics at the University of Evansville, said Obama has mounted an innovative campaign that's stressed early voting and his supporters appear more energized than those for Clinton.

Victories in Indiana and NC would finally put Hillary (and the rest of us) out of her misery.

Some good news for Obama in Indiana

By RICK CALLAHAN
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Dream Ticket - Obama Hits Clintons on 'Dream Ticket'. Read Full Story.
ABCNews.com

Quote:

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Early voting in Indiana could offer some encouragement to presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who needs a victory in its upcoming primary after a tough few weeks on the campaign trail.

Obama victories in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6 could help him regain momentum in his nomination fight against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Obama has been on the defensive because of comments by his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and his own comments about people in small towns growing bitter.

About 20 percent of the 127,000-plus absentee ballots received as of early Friday were cast in three Indiana counties - Marion, Monroe and Lake - that political observers believe Obama is strongly favored to win.

Lake County has a large population of black voters and is in Chicago's shadow. Obama has typically won big among college-age voters, and Monroe County is the home of Indiana University in Bloomington. Obama's campaign sought out IU students with voter registration and early voting drives and a free Dave Matthews concert.

Robert Dion, a professor of American politics at the University of Evansville, said Obama has mounted an innovative campaign that's stressed early voting and his supporters appear more energized than those for Clinton.

Victories in Indiana and NC would finally put Hillary (and the rest of us) out of her misery.

Roxxxanne wrote:

Victories in Indiana and NC would finally put Hillary (and the rest of us) out of her misery.

You have to have the worst track record with these predictions.

RALEIGH, N.C., May 2 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has been avoiding stops in black communities in his quest to become the first black major party nominee for the U.S. presidency.

Isaac Onah, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina, told the Boston Globe that black voters appear to understand Obama's campaign strategy. They also understand why Obama had to repudiate his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Onah said.

"I think black voters are saying to themselves, 'Why isn't Rev. Wright shutting up?'" Onah said.

Obama hopes for a strong victory in North Carolina, similar to the one he got in South Carolina, the report said. In South Carolina, 80 percent of blacks voted for Obama in the Democratic primary, helping him trounce Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

Darryl Carson, a 41-year-old industrial clerk, told the Globe he sees Obama "walking a thin line." He believes other black voters in North Carolina will be there for Obama where it matters, in the voting booth, the newspaper said.

I don't know -- I can see him maybe saying "I already have their support, I need to go convince the unconvinced now because I'm running out of time". But I'm not sure it's a fact that he's avoiding them. Off to read the whole article and see how strong the evidence is.

Here, I think that article was based on this one: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/05/01/obama_walks_fine_line_in_quest_for_white_votes/?page=2

A little more information there. It's still not clear to me that he actually IS avoiding black communities. They mention blacks in Charlotte a couple of times, but according to the New York Times election guide, Obama was there in the last month.

Obama has cut back on his campaigning in the African-American community in the months since his highly publicized speech at Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s church in Atlanta - even as black voters in places like Charlotte are mobilizing on his behalf as never before.

Here is an interesting observation about the Obama campaign.
It seems that he is intentionally avoiding black neighborhoods, even though he expects them to vote for him...

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/05/02/report_obama_avoids_black_neighborhoods/5582/

Quote:

RALEIGH, N.C., May 2 (UPI) -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has been avoiding stops in black communities in his quest to become the first black major party nominee for the U.S. presidency.

Isaac Onah, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina, told the Boston Globe that black voters appear to understand Obama's campaign strategy. They also understand why Obama had to repudiate his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Onah said.

"I think black voters are saying to themselves, 'Why isn't Rev. Wright shutting up?'" Onah said.

Obama hopes for a strong victory in North Carolina, similar to the one he got in South Carolina, the report said. In South Carolina, 80 percent of blacks voted for Obama in the Democratic primary, helping him trounce Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

Darryl Carson, a 41-year-old industrial clerk, told the Globe he sees Obama "walking a thin line." He believes other black voters in North Carolina will be there for Obama where it matters, in the voting booth, the newspaper said.

Why avoid the people you expect to vote for you?
That actually seems counterproductive to me.