WMD Owl Wrote:When a Candidate promises you ‘hope” and “change”.. yet doesn’t specify what “hope” and “change” means, you have refer to the historical context.
Obama has been very explicit ini referencing both the historical context and his specific ideas. Not listening to or agreeing with such does not nullify their existence. See his website under issues.
WMD Owl Wrote:Obama has been associating with unsavory individuals such as Rev. Wright for years, been associating with “terrorists” like William Ayers for years, and has been attending meetings with the like of Khalidi and Said, who invited the racist “President” of Iran to ‘speak” to Columbia University…
I love this. First and foremost, I don't know if Obama ever met Said, but I would like to point out that Ed Said died 5 years ago. That was two years before Ahmadinejad became president of Iran and 4 years before he spoke at Columbia University. I seriously doubt he was in any way involved in inviting Ahmadinejad to speak.
Second of all, Khalidi is a well-respected American scholar, whether you agree with his positions or not. Like many scholars, he has complicated and nuanced views of the issues. He has been simultaneously critical of both the Israelis and the Palestinians, without being dismissive of either.
Third, if John McCain were so concerned about Khalidi and his ilk, he might have thought of that before the International Republican Institute, of which he was chair of the board at the time, gave $448,000 to Khalidi's Center for Palestine Research and Studies in FY1999. But you don't have to take my word for it... I've attached the form 990 for that tax year. (See p. 14 listing the grant under West Bank and p. 17 listing the members of the board of directors).
Lastly, if we want to talk about associations, you can make anyone sound bad with the unsavory characters from their lives -- or even the savory ones who you just include only one fact about. Let's see... shall we do McCain?
G. Gordon Liddy, burglar and would-be domestic terrorist (and host of a McCain fundraiser at his house... sound familiar)
Charles Keating, congress-bribing failed S&L exec (we'll just omit that McCain was largely cleared of everything but bad judgment and actually testified against Keating at his civil trial)
Wendy Gramm, See-no-evil member of Enron Audit Committee at time of collapse (OMG, this woman must truly be awful!!! I know this for a fact because clearly I would know more facts about what went on at the upper levels of Enron than members of the Audit committee did, right?)
Ted Stevens, convicted corrupt politician (these guys worked together for years!)
Ted Kennedy (I hear he killed his girlfriend!)
Barack HUSSEIN Obama (oh, wait, I take that one back)
WMD Owl Wrote:What does Obama stand for?
(Ignore “change” and “hope” and ….?)
Again, he has had his policy positions up for over a year now. Feel free to read them.
WMD Owl Wrote:You listen to his public announcements, his criticisms of the US Supreme Court in terms of civil rights rulings.. and the “distribution of assets” and how he wants to “spread the wealth around” ,……
And it sounds like a sharp turn to the left to me…
Correct Comrade?
And I don’t think the American people signed up for that…
Technically, they haven't signed up for anything yet -- at least not the 2/3 of voters who haven't voted yet. But for many of his supporters, we have read his policy positions and we DO know exactly what we've signed up for.
Lastly, as to the oft-repeated charge that he is one of the most liberal members of the senate, the ratings issued by publications and groups are especially flawed when it comes to the Senate. Why? Here are some of the votes used to calculate the National Journal ratings in which Obama was most liberal. Which vote on each of these would be liberal or conservative?
Quote:Establish a Senate Office of Public Integrity to handle ethics complaints against senators.
Table an amendment that would require the Homeland Security Department to screen 100 percent of cargo containers entering the country within five years.
Exempt extensions of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts from budget rules for offsets.
Limit federal, state, and local governments' eminent-domain power over private land.
Eliminate an immigrant guest-worker program
Allow certain immigrants to stay in the United States while renewing their visas.
Block funding for World Bank malaria control and prevention programs
The other big problem with that 2007 rating for Obama is that the threshold for being rated is having voted on 50% of the votes in all 3 categories. McCain was unrated due to missing the threshold in 2 of the categories due to his campaign. Obama was also campaigning, but returned to the Senate enough to meet the threshold for ranking. Of course, the times that he (and other candidates) went out of his way to return to vote were when the issues were most divisive and most partisan.