Factcheck.org is taking the Illinois Senator to task for his new ad in PA that claims he doesn’t take money from oil companies. Like many of his claims regarding special interests, his statements are deceptive er creative.
In a new ad, Obama says, “I don’t take money from oil companies.”
Technically, that’s true, since a law that has been on the books for more than a century prohibits corporations from giving money directly to any federal candidate. But that doesn’t distinguish Obama from his rivals in the race.
We find the statement misleading:
* Obama has accepted more than $213,000 from individuals who work for companies in the oil and gas industry and their spouses.
* Two of Obama’s bundlers are top executives at oil companies and are listed on his Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the presidential hopeful.
Dear DNC leadeship,
I realize that you have a history of making poor choices and losing national elections but let’s set that aside for a moment. You are indeed correct in assessing that what’s happening in the current race between Senators Clinton and Obama is a potential threat towards democratic unity. However, your solution, which appears to be the dual strategy of calling for Senator Clinton to quit while also calling for superdelegates to step forward and bring pressure to bear before Pennsylvania and the remaining states vote, risks doing the opposite of what you intend. You see, calling for someone to quit and then abusing your offices and the apparatus of the DNC in an attempt to end the race early is quite undemocratic. Not only that, your attempts to undermine democracy for the sake of favoritism (under the guise of unity, of course) are transparent. Oh yes, all of us rank and file voters noticed that.
It’s starting to become real clear why Mr. Obama has garnered so much GOP and conservative love.
The Obama campaign has sent out a mailer complete with GOP talking points that parrots the insurance industry’s attack on universal health care back in 1993. The “Harry and Louise” ads that many will remember set this country back decades and still define the baseless fears that many Americans have regarding universal coverage.
Let me be clear, this is an attack that goes way beyond Hillary Clinton’s health care plan –it is a slap in the face to all of us that have worked for years to correct the false information and absolute terror many American have had until very recently of universal coverage.
Consider the voice crying out in the wilderness, “…this kind of squabbling, how many children is this going to get health care? How many people are going to get an education from this? How many kids are going to be able to go to college because of this?”
The importance of Edwards’ campaign lies in his message and the realization that while we wait Americans are suffering and some of them are dying.
Whether he receives the nomination or not, it is essential that poverty and economic injustice in America become key issues once more within the democratic party. We are living in a time of economic disparity in the US not seen since the Gilded Age and are headed towards a recession. For many, the effects are already being felt but it is all too easy for those upper middle class and middle class Americans to live their entire lives without seeing the immense poverty that exists outside suburbia and gated communities.
It’s taken a while for the results in New Hampshire to sink in. Almost everyone has a theory as to how and why, Senator Hillary Clinton manged to defy them all. I won’t repeat them all here but I will say almost all of them exclude two things (1) old fashioned, hard, on the ground, work on her campaign’s behalf and (2) more voters in New Hampshire simply decided they liked Clinton better than her opponents.
On primary night, pollsters, pundits, and a media that was gleefully tapdancing on her imagined political grave minutes before were rendered both speechless and in some cases overly imaginative as a different picture, one that didn’t include an overwhelming Obama victory, started to emerge. With the results coming in at the pace of molasses and the results still showing a Clinton lead, Chris Matthews at MSNBC theorized about how he wouldn’t be surprised if Clinton gave an early new conference and declared victory (stealing victory from Obama as viewers would then go to bed thinking Clinton had won and miss the real results). But even after Wolf Blitzer announced over the air that the AP had called the race for Clinton, CNN remained defiant, refusing to call the race until Senator Obama was making his way to the podium to give his concession speech.
They say that after denial comes acceptance, but for many, it seems that after denial comes conspiracy. The first cries were heard on Digg.com coming from disgruntled Ron Paul supporters, who, at least on Digg, had already established themselves a reputation for being prone to, shall we say, “creative interpretations” of reality. An article reporting on alleged disparities between votes that were hand counted versus those that were counted electronically was twisted to allege that there was proof of voter fraud in the New Hampshire primaries. Continue reading ‘Is Dennis Kucinich, Obama’s New Hitman?’
For those of you that keep insisting that (1) there was a “cry” and (2) it won Senator Clinton New Hampshire, please allow Jon Stewart to give you some perspective.
At this point, I’m seriously starting to doubt the sanity of those that keep repeating this interpretation of events. One thing it shows –without a doubt– is the power of media to spread a myth even in the age of the internet and easy access to video archives.
Time for some levity while we all await the anointing in New Hampshire and the accompanying cries for the losers to just give up and forget about all those other states and the democratic process of nominating candidates altogether.
From our friend’s at amazon, and no, I’m not making this up.
My favorite part is the mail warning:
* We are always in compliance with Section 13 from part 40 of the NRC Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules and regulations and Postal Service regulations specified in 49 CFR 173.421 for activity limits of low level radioactive materials. Item will be shipped in accordance with Postal Service activity limits specified in Publication 52.
…or at least knocked Hillary Clinton out the race.
There has been one thing that has disturbed me above all other aspects of this primary season and that has been the absolute hatred aimed at Senator Hillary Clinton from so many democrats and so-called independents. When Barack Obama took Iowa, it was hard to tell whether the elation many displayed came from Obama’s victory or Hillary’s defeat. The schadenfreude at Clinton’s loss has been been on show at every minor stumble or political gaffe throughout her candidacy and although hatred for notorious politicians is nothing new, both the intensity and lack of reason/explanation for people’s hatred for her is.
Ask any democrat or independent that dislikes Hillary, why they hate her the way they do and nine out of ten of them will give some ephemeral reason or excuse that boils down to, “I just do.” When pressed further for an explanation, they’ll usually cite a list of reasons that find their genesis in none other than Rush Limbaugh and his more than a decade long campaign against her. Both the so-called “Clinton Machine” and the term “Clintonistas,” once residing solely in the collective imagination of right wing kooks, have escaped right wing radio and freeper boards and made their way into the mainstream. Now the terms are legitimated by mainstream journalists in print and on air, and worse, used by dissenting democrats and progressives alike to describe Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
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