Obamamania

[criddic3]

That being said, I think if Obama runs, Obama wins.

You mean he wins and becomes the Democratic Nominee, or he wins the election?

I hate to be so cynical about this but Obama as the actual nominee I fear would result in an easy Republican win (which is why many conservatives secretly want him to run). Nothing would unite the Southern voting bloc and nervous Northerners faster than a black/biracial candidate.

That's a little unfair. Perhaps not entirely untrue, but it implies that all Republicans are racists. I like Obama, but I feel that he's too inexperienced. Maybe in a year, when the campaign is in full swing, we'll better know what kind of leader he would be and where he stands on all the important issues. I have doubts about his winning the nomination over Clinton. Not impossible, but unlikely I think. My vote depends entirely on who the competition is and where they stand, as well. I'm keeping an open mind about Obama, and Clinton (though I seriously doubt I'd ever vote the Clintons into office -- I didn't vote for her husband in '96).

[Akash]

Eradicating poverty has been the most important social issue to me ever since I was a little boy, and that's the focus and raison d'etre of the Edwards campaign.

Here, Here!

[Akash]

That being said, I think if Obama runs, Obama wins.

You mean he wins and becomes the Democratic Nominee, or he wins the election?

I hate to be so cynical about this but Obama as the actual nominee I fear would result in an easy Republican win (which is why many conservatives secretly want him to run). Nothing would unite the Southern voting bloc and nervous Northerners faster than a black/biracial candidate.

[Sabin]

Let's play "How is this not evil?" In a moment though...

I won't lie. I think Edwards would be a fantastic candidate, but I seem to have fallen under the Obama sway, and I can't really defend it. He's mostly in line with my politics but certainly not more than other candidates, and he's not as experienced as I'd like but Lord knows if there anything we've learned frm this past eight years it's that the president is only a mouthpiece for whomever he places behind him (or puts him up front).

At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, people seem to thirst for hope right now and there is a public demand for Obama to run. People want to believe in him so much they'll overlook everything that makes other candidates more/less/equally appealing, and it's fascinating to me.

I'm keeping well aware that falling under the spell of a public image rather than a candidate can be totally ruinous, as we've learned from the 2000 election in which a bullshit folksy non-entity crawled into power with an insidious board meeting behind him. I wouldn't possibly characterize an Obama presidency in that vein, but I'm one for leaning the lessons most of the country may have forgotten and am doing my best to resist this Obamamania.

That being said, I think if Obama runs, Obama wins.


On with the article...

CNN, Fox News Spar Over Obama Report
Bill Carter, New York Times

WASHINGTON (Jan. 24) - A disputed report on the Web site of a conservative magazine about Senator Barack Obama’s childhood schooling kicked off a pointed exchange this week between the rival cable news networks CNN and Fox News, when CNN seemed to make an overt effort both to debunk the report and to question the quality of Fox News’s journalism.

The original report, posted on the online version of Insight, a magazine owned by The Washington Times, said that as a child in Indonesia, Mr. Obama had attended a madrassa, a type of school that has been known to teach a radical version of the Muslim faith. Mr. Obama, who spent a few years in Jakarta as a boy, is a Christian.

Adding to the political volatility of the report was the attribution of the news to “researchers connected to” Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The two senators are expected to be the leading candidates for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, attracting intense news coverage, and the sparring between CNN and Fox News, which are often described as ideological opposites, may be a prelude to more accusations of inaccurate reporting.

The back-and-forth also comes amid a backdrop of increasingly nasty competition between the two networks, with CNN trying to promote the quality of its journalism as a counter to Fox’s ratings. Fox continues to command by far the largest news audience in cable television.

Representatives of Mr. Obama of Illinois and Mrs. Clinton of New York denounced the Insight report, calling it false and an effort by a conservative publication to smear two Democratic contenders at the same time.

The Fox News Channel discussed the report on two of its programs. It was also picked up by The New York Post, which shares ownership with Fox News, and was discussed by several conservative talk-radio hosts.

Yesterday, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson, said in an e-mail message: “This is a textbook example of how the other side works. A right-wing rag makes up a scurrilous charge and prints it with no real attribution. The smear gets injected into the atmosphere and picked up by talk radio. In this case both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton were victimized.”

A spokesman for Mr. Obama had previously been quoted in The Washington Post as calling the report “appallingly irresponsible.”

On its Web site yesterday, Insight defended its report, saying, “Our reporter’s sources close to the Clinton opposition research war room confirm the truth of the story.”

CNN’s political director, Sam Feist, said he had seen the Insight report discussed on “Fox and Friends.” Mr. Feist said he wanted to determine the validity of what he said, if true, would be a “holy-cow political story,” so he sent a correspondent, John Vause, to Jakarta from Beijing. Mr. Vause’s report, broadcast Monday on CNN, described the Jakarta school as unaffiliated with Islamic fundamentalism. The school headmaster said it was a “public school” that did not “focus on religion.”

The president of CNN US, Jon Klein, said that his network’s report was “not a response to Fox per se, though they did seem to relish repeating the Insight-reported rumor without bothering to — or being able to — ascertain the facts.”

In its report, CNN included a clip from the Fox News program “The Big Story With John Gibson.” Mr. Gibson interviewed a Republican political strategist about Mrs. Clinton’s reported role in the Obama rumors. As Fox News has in every story on the madrassa accusations, Mr. Gibson used the attribution “according to Insight magazine.” But he also said: “Look at what some anti-Obama Democrats are doing to her political rival now. They are playing the Muslim phobia card.”

On Monday, the hosts of “Fox and Friends” said they wanted to clarify earlier comments after Mr. Obama’s office contacted the show, declaring its report “absolutely false.”

In comments after Mr. Vause’s report, the CNN anchors Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper seemed to chide others for not practicing legitimate journalism on the story. “CNN did what any serious news organization is supposed to do in this kind of a situation,” Mr. Blitzer said. “We actually conducted an exclusive firsthand investigation inside Indonesia to check out the school.”

Mr. Cooper said: “That’s the difference between talking about news and reporting it. You send a reporter, check the facts, and you decide at home.”

A Fox News spokeswoman, Irena Briganti, said CNN was mainly looking for publicity in attacking its higher-rated rival. Of Mr. Cooper’s comment, she said, “Yet another cry for attention by the Paris Hilton of television news, Anderson Cooper.” (Jesus Christ, I hate these people.)

[Sonic Youth]

CNN debunks false report about Obama

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.

Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.

Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and step-father and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.

Insight attributed the information in its article to an unnamed source, who said it was discovered by "researchers connected to Senator Clinton." A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim.

He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."

Insight stood by its story in a response posted on its Web site Monday afternoon.

The Insight article was cited several times Friday on Fox News and was also referenced by the New York Post, The Glenn Beck program on CNN Headline News and a number of political blogs.

School not a madrassa

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils. Insight reported that Obama's political opponents believed the school promoted Wahhabism, a fundamentalist form of Islam, "and are seeking to prove it."

"It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school."

The Obama aide described Fox News' broadcasting of the Insight story "appallingly irresponsible."

Fox News executive Bill Shine told CNN "Reliable Sources" anchor Howard Kurtz that some of the network's hosts were simply expressing their opinions and repeatedly cited Insight as the source of the allegations.

Obama has noted in his two books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," that he spent two years in a Muslim school and another two years in a Catholic school while living in Indonesia from age 6 to 10.

[Sonic Youth]

Bigoted conservative scumbags strike again. Why don't they just legalize lynching instead?

Obama 'was educated in madrassa'
Tim Reid and Tom Baldwin in Washington
The Times of London

Barack Obama was given a rude awakening to the cut-throat world of presidential politics yesterday after being accused of hiding four years in which he was educated at a madrassa when a teenager.

The claim, made in the conservative Insight magazine, also revealed the Machiavellian scheming of political activists in a presidential race still nearly two years away.

It was aimed at tarnishing Mr Obama’s image in the week he announced himself as a White House contender. But the article also claimed that the madrassa allegations came from aides to Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s main opponent for the Democratic nomination.

This may be wishful thinking on behalf of Republicans. The Clinton camp is determined not to be accused of digging dirt on Mr Obama because they fear such tactics could backfire, given his popularity.

But the Insight allegations represent an exquisite double shot at the Democrats’ two leading White House contenders: it implies that Mr Obama, whose middle name is Hussein, is a closet Islamic extremist, and that Mrs Clinton is so rattled by his candidacy she is using underhand tactics to weaken him.

Mr Obama, who is expected to announce formally his candidacy on February 10, has never been subjected to the hardball tactics of the presidential arena — until yesterday. Last night an aide said that the campaign was working on a formal statement, but added that the claims were “not accurate”.

The online article begins: “Are the American people ready for an elected president who was educated in a madrassa as a young boy and has not been forthcoming about his Muslim heritage?” It continues: “This is the question Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s camp is asking about Senator Barack Obama.”

Mr Obama’s mother was a white woman from Kansas; his father, a black Kenyan Muslim. He states in his recent biography that he attended a predominately Muslim school when he lived in Jakarta as a teenager.

But the article claims: “In Indonesia, the young Obama was enrolled in a madrassa and was raised and educated as a Muslim.” It says that Mr Obama omitted to say in his memoir, or at any other time, that he attended the school for four years.

Mr Obama, who has spent his adult life in Chicago, calls himself a Christian and says that he believes in God. He attends a local church.

A source close to the Clinton campaign told The Times, a day before the Insight article was published, that they do not want to be seen as attacking Mr Obama or digging for dirt, but that they would be happy for another Democrat contender to criticise him.

[criddic3]

As opposed to Texas state legislator, the Governor works more often with national prominence. It is a better stepping stone to the White House in the last few decades than being a senator. The last senator to win directly from the senate was JFK. LBJ and Nixon were v.p. Carter, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush were all governors. George H. W. Bush was v.p. By 2008, no senator will have won for 40 years. This is only guaranteed to change if both sides' candidates are senators (ie: Clinton vs. McCain).

[Damien]

Umm...SIX years as Governor of Texas.

And how does that constitute NATIONAL experience, as opposed to local Texas experience?

[criddic3]

Umm...SIX years as Governor of Texas.

Edwards has his one term as a senator, but will not have held office for another four years by 2008. He has more experience than Obama, and was certainly more likable than Kerry, but will have to contend with Hillary Clinton's campaign. Having lost as a vice presidential candidate doesn't do anything for him, although there is precedent for that. FDR won after losing as a v.p. choice. Bob Dole was nominated against Clinton in '96, 20 years after running for v.p. under Gerald Ford. So Edwards has a chance, and an Edwards/Obama ticket would be interesting. However, it is a uphill climb for him to convince Democrats he should be their general election candidate.

[Damien]

He's only been in the senate for 2 years, and for four by 2008. former senator John Edwards was not nominated in '04 partly because of his lack of national experience (which, incidentally, will hurt him even more in '08).

God I should know better by now than to respond to a criddicism, but ummm what national experience did your beloved Mr. Bush have in 2000?

And I hereby officially announce my support for John Edwards in 2008. My sentimental side still adores Dennis Kucinich (and the 2004 Kucinich campaign was the first time I've ever been listed in campaign literature as a "celebrity supporter" of a candidate) but sometimes one needs to be realistic.

Eradicating poverty has been the most important social issue to me ever since I was a little boy, and that's the focus and raison d'etre of the Edwards campaign.

[criddic3]

I think some idiots will never get past the fact that his name rhymes with Osama and his middle name is Hussein. While it's amusing, as it has to be in these times, it doesn't have anything to do with his politics. He should be considered on the merits. Voters are wierd sometimes, though. But at least they were smart enough to re-elect President Bush.

This post was one of the most sane things you've ever written. And then you had to throw in that last sentence. Now, I'm convinced that you actually treasure your outsider status on this board; this purposeful stirring of the pot. I'm officially over responding to these kinds of attention-seeking zingers.

I mean, what is your next post going to be? "A Vote for 'United 93' is a vote for Bush!"? This incessant need to tie everything back to your own agenda is completely self-aggrandizing. I'm just so totally done with it.

No, I wouldn't go that far. United 93 is a tribute to the fallen on 9/11, not to President Bush. But I do think the voters were unusually wise in re-electing Bush in 2004, especially considering his status in polls right now. Remember, there were times during that election when the media seemed to suggest Bush's chances of winning were in jeopardy. It could have gone to Kerry. It's just an opinion, but I think that would have been terrible for the country.

I like Barack Obama. He is articulate, charismatic and likable. This will take him far in politics, although I don't think the time is right for him to attempt a Presidential run. He's only been in the senate for 2 years, and for four by 2008. former senator John Edwards was not nominated in '04 partly because of his lack of national experience (which, incidentally, will hurt him even more in '08).

[flipp525]

I think some idiots will never get past the fact that his name rhymes with Osama and his middle name is Hussein. While it's amusing, as it has to be in these times, it doesn't have anything to do with his politics. He should be considered on the merits. Voters are wierd sometimes, though. But at least they were smart enough to re-elect President Bush.

This post was one of the most sane things you've ever written. And then you had to throw in that last sentence. Now, I'm convinced that you actually treasure your outsider status on this board; this purposeful stirring of the pot. I'm officially over responding to these kinds of attention-seeking zingers.

I mean, what is your next post going to be? "A Vote for 'United 93' is a vote for Bush!"? This incessant need to tie everything back to your own agenda is completely self-aggrandizing. I'm just so totally done with it.



Edited By flipp525 on 1167857395

[criddic3]

I think some idiots will never get past the fact that his name rhymes with Osama and his middle name is Hussein. While it's amusing, as it has to be in these times, it doesn't have anything to do with his politics. He should be considered on the merits. Voters are wierd sometimes, though. But at least they were smart enough to re-elect President Bush.

[Aceisgreat]

CNN apologizes for mistaken headline
Tue Jan 2, 4:10 PM ET

NEW YORK - CNN apologized Tuesday for mistakenly promoting a story on the search for Osama bin Laden with the headline "Where's Obama?"

A spokesman for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama said the apology was accepted.

The blunder came Monday evening on Wolf Blitzer's news show "The Situation Room." Both Soledad O'Brien and Blitzer offered separate apologies during CNN's morning show Tuesday.

CNN called it a "bad typographical error" by its graphics department.

"We want to apologize for that bad typo," Blitzer said. "We also want to apologize personally to Sen. Barack Obama. I'm going to be making a call to him later this morning to offer my personal apology."

Tommy Vieto, Obama's press secretary, said he appreciated the bloggers and activists who brought the error to light so quickly and helped make sure it was corrected.

"Though I'd note that the `s' and `b' keys aren't all that close to each other, I assume it was just an unfortunate mistake, and don't think there was any truly malicious intent," Vieto said.

[criddic3]

You have to look at the whole book, not just an excerpt of a criticism that happens to go along with your thinking.

I know you are a young man( (espec. if you are Bryan on MYSpaceUAABD) and have not had to think much about life, except what someone filled your head with, I sincerely hope, that as you get older, you begin to discover something NEW that you did not consider when you made up your mind about the neo-cons, etc. It will happen, mark my words.

In order to be a well-rounded adult, you must learn a new fact everyday, and see the world from a wider purview that what you see now. If you get to be my age( maybe not possible in the world the neo-cons have created), and still have the views and baggage that you have been carrying, you will be a sad person, indeed. I know this from experience: I have mentioned that I have a neighbour just as set in his ways as you, but sadly, he DID not learn much in life( he is 65), and it reveals much about him when he opens his mouth. Read other reviews, too. Read what is between the lines. But read the book, then tell me what you think. Don't avoid another point of view without considering it.
I taught theatre, and would,every now and then, run into a student who thought he knew everything there was about acting and theatre. It did not take too long for someone like this to either get the program and open his ears to LEARN, or drop the class, in which case, he learned nothing new.

You must have realized by now that when your opinion is attacked by intelligent people on this board: people who know books, theatre, art, music and philosophy as well as movies, that you are out of step with what is really happening around you.

cam, I endeavor to learn throughout my life. I have always said so. I love to learn new things, but learning new things does NOT mean that you will change your political views on a dime. I do not adhere to everything the neo-cons say or do, but I happen to like President Bush. This bothers people like you to no end because you think this means I am closed-minded for not hating him or his policies. If learning something new and becoming well-rounded means I have to one day think like you, then you have a wierd sense of what learning is. I will form many different opinions in my lifetime. I may even one day find a Democratic candidate worthy of my vote for President, but if I do it won't be because I will reject my respect or admiration for certain people on the other side of the aisle. There are good and bad people from all political ideologies. I am always open to new ideas, when they make sense. To change just for the sake of changing is just as dangerous, in my opinion, as stubbornly staying the same in the face of life-changing events. If I encounter a reason to change my views, I will. Until that day, I will defend the ones I currently hold.