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riley
Joined: 08 Feb 2003
Location: where creditors can find me
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 Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2005 11:18 pm Post subject: Barack Obama |
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I first heard about him during the Democratic Convention and saw his speech. So far, I have been impressed by him. Here is his take on the Democrats and what they should do.
www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/9/30/102745/165 |
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Pligganease
Joined: 14 Sep 2004
Location: The deep south...
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 12:15 am Post subject: |
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This guy is the ideal candidate for president, but the Democrats aren't stupid enough to push him in 2008.
I would vote for him in a heartbeat. He's intelligent, realistic, and optimistic. He is definitely a rising star in the Democratic Party. |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 1:01 am Post subject: |
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| He is the lone Democrat I would vote for in a presidential election. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 5:17 am Post subject: |
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The man has class.
Give him a term or two or three in the Senate to get some seasoning on the national stage. Then we'll see if we have presidential timber. Few senators have ever been elected president. And rightly so. Legislative skill and administrative skill are different things. |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 8:53 am Post subject: |
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I like him.
wannago
| Quote: |
| He is the lone Democrat I would vote for in a presidential election. |
Oh, and wannago, did you notice he's black ... hey, just kidding around, though I have to say I think he is the first black human you have had a good word for around here. (On Ray Nagin : "This is your mayor on drugs."
Cool. Glad I was here to see it.
Ya-ta Boy
| Quote: |
| Give him a term or two or three in the Senate to get some seasoning on the national stage. |
What you call "seasoning" would likely take the edge off him, and that edge might be what the country needs right now. Anyway, the legislative branch has been a poor breeding gorund for presidential candidates, most of them have come from the ranks of governors ever since JFK was shot.A;most every candidate to have LOST an election since then was a Senator : McGovern, Ford (and unelected president, previously in the Senate), Mondale, Dukakis ... and Bush Sr, whose only elected office aside from VP had been in the Senate and lost after one term to a governor from, of all places, Arkansas.
Almost forgot Dole. The Senate seems to be a good place for men to grow to shall we say, ppost-maturity, all the while hoping for their shot.
Okay, sure, then Kerry, also.
I think there are reasons for this : the skills needed in a big crowd of lawyers are different from those needed to create vision and lead. A governor has already seen the inside of an office of the Chief Executive, and most states work on a model of the national gvt, just on a smaller scale.
Probably not just me, I probably read this stuff somewhere ... anyway, JFK didn't need any "seasoning." Memory serves, he bypassed the Senate and went right on up from the House of Reps. |
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wannago
Joined: 16 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:31 am Post subject: |
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| The Bobster wrote: |
I like him.
wannago
| Quote: |
| He is the lone Democrat I would vote for in a presidential election. |
Oh, and wannago, did you notice he's black ... hey, just kidding around, though I have to say I think he is the first black human you have had a good word for around here. (On Ray Nagin : "This is your mayor on drugs."
Cool. Glad I was here to see it. |
Doggone it bob, just because I don't like Whoopi or Nagin doesn't mean I'm racist. I've commented several times on Condi Rice and Colin Powell...or did you forget they were black?
| The Bobster wrote: |
Ya-ta Boy
| Quote: |
| Give him a term or two or three in the Senate to get some seasoning on the national stage. |
What you call "seasoning" would likely take the edge off him, and that edge might be what the country needs right now. Anyway, the legislative branch has been a poor breeding gorund for presidential candidates, most of them have come from the ranks of governors ever since JFK was shot.A;most every candidate to have LOST an election since then was a Senator : McGovern, Ford (and unelected president, previously in the Senate), Mondale, Dukakis ... and Bush Sr, whose only elected office aside from VP had been in the Senate and lost after one term to a governor from, of all places, Arkansas. |
Well, bob, this is a day that will live in infamy. I agree with you. I think any more time in Congress would spoil the passion Obama speaks with. The thing I like about him that I don't like about other Dems is that he doesn't screech about conservatives and he has ideas for a future for this country. You can see it when he speaks and you can see it in his eyes. He doesn't scream (ala Ray Nagin) and I believe he's ready. If the Dems were smart they would head the Hilly wagon off at the pass and get this guy some national exposure. |
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Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 9:37 am Post subject: ... |
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He's awesome for a politician.
Respect to wannago for a bipartisan statement.
I like McCain.
I just hope the boy keeps his head about himself in terms of scandals.
He has a kind of rock star status. He'll be fried if he starts sleeping with groupies.
It's all about priorities. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:03 am Post subject: |
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| He sounds too good to be true. Somebody buy him a rabbit's foot or two, and don't let him walk under any ladders. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:13 am Post subject: |
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| McCain and Obama for 2008? That would be great. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:25 am Post subject: |
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| If he really wants to be prez, he would do well to spend a couple of terms in Washington learning how a legislature works, then go back home and get himself elected governor. The public may be stupid, but it likes to have a candidate with experience in administration. Far more presidents have served as governors first, not senators. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:44 am Post subject: |
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From his blog:
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E85
Thursday, May 12, 2005
A lot of times, trying to get something done here in Washington can get pretty frustrating. There's bitter partisanship, petty politics, and a general atmosphere that isn't always conducive to passing legislation that people actually care about.
But I'm happy to report that today wasn't one of those days.
Today, the Senate passed my proposal, which will be included in the transportation bill, that would make it easier for people to fill their cars with a cheaper alternative to gasoline.
Now, I know most of you are as tired as I am of pulling into a gas station and seeing that the prices are even higher than they were the last time you filled up. It's $2.19, then it's $2.24, then it's $2.35, and up and up. When will it stop? As long as we're dependent on oil from the Middle East, we don't know.
That's why we need to stop just talking about energy independence and actually do something about it.
If someone told you that you could fill your cars and trucks with fuel that's 50 cents cheaper than current gas prices, you'd jump at the chance. But what a lot of people don't know is that this option is already out there. It's called E-85, and it's a fuel made of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. It's cleaner than gasoline, it's cheaper, and most importantly, it reduces our dependence on oil from the Middle East. In fact, the Indianapolis 500 thought it was such a good alternative that pretty soon, their entire fleet will run on E-85.
Right now, there are millions of cars and trucks that can run on E-85. You might even have one yourself. They're known as "flexible fuel vehicles," and the auto industry is turning out hundreds of thousands of them every year.
Of course, the reason you're not seeing more cars run on E-85 is that we've got a severe shortage of E-85 fuel stations. While there are more than 180,000 gas stations all over America, only about 400 offer E-85.
This is where my proposal comes in. It's going to cost stations to install E-85 pumps, so we thought we'd give them a tax credit that would encourage them to do so. As more and more stations realize how popular this cheap alternative to gas is becoming, more will utilize this tax credit and install their own pumps.
We've got to get serious about energy independence. You've all heard politician after politician making speeches about it, but we shouldn't have to wait any longer to finally see progress, especially since there's so much technology out there that we can use right now to make us less dependent on oil that comes from the Mideast and more reliant on fuel that we can grow in Illinois. |
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mithridates
Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 10:50 am Post subject: |
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Nice! This one's even better. I can see why you would vote for him, wannago.
| Quote: |
To the Daily Kos Crew:I read with interest your recent discussion regarding my comments on the floor(1, 2, 3) during the debate on John Roberts' nomination. I don't get a chance to follow blog traffic as regularly as I would like, and rarely get the time to participate in the discussions. I thought this might be a good opportunity to offer some thoughts about not only judicial confirmations, but how to bring about meaningful change in this country.
Maybe some of you believe I could have made my general point more artfully, but it's precisely because many of these groups are friends and supporters that I felt it necessary to speak my mind. There is one way, over the long haul, to guarantee the appointment of judges that are sensitive to issues of social justice, and that is to win the right to appoint them by recapturing the presidency and the Senate. And I don't believe we get there by vilifying good allies, with a lifetime record of battling for progressive causes, over one vote or position. I am convinced that, our mutual frustrations and strongly-held beliefs notwithstanding, the strategy driving much of Democratic advocacy, and the tone of much of our rhetoric, is an impediment to creating a workable progressive majority in this country. According to the storyline that drives many advocacy groups and Democratic activists - a storyline often reflected in comments on this blog - we are up against a sharply partisan, radically conservative, take-no-prisoners Republican party. They have beaten us twice by energizing their base with red meat rhetoric and single-minded devotion and discipline to their agenda. In order to beat them, it is necessary for Democrats to get some backbone, give as good as they get, brook no compromise, drive out Democrats who are interested in "appeasing" the right wing, and enforce a more clearly progressive agenda. The country, finally knowing what we stand for and seeing a sharp contrast, will rally to our side and thereby usher in a new progressive era.I think this perspective misreads the American people. From traveling throughout Illinois and more recently around the country, I can tell you that Americans are suspicious of labels and suspicious of jargon. They don't think George Bush is mean-spirited or prejudiced, but have become aware that his administration is irresponsible and often incompetent. They don't think that corporations are inherently evil (a lot of them work in corporations), but they recognize that big business, unchecked, can fix the game to the detriment of working people and small entrepreneurs. They don't think America is an imperialist brute, but are angry that the case to invade Iraq was exaggerated, are worried that we have unnecessarily alienated existing and potential allies around the world, and are ashamed by events like those at Abu Ghraib which violate our ideals as a country.It's this non-ideological lens through which much of the country viewed Judge Roberts' confirmation hearings. A majority of folks, including a number of Democrats and Independents, don't think that John Roberts is an ideologue bent on overturning every vestige of civil rights and civil liberties protections in our possession. Instead, they have good reason to believe he is a conservative judge who is (like it or not) within the mainstream of American jurisprudence, a judge appointed by a conservative president who could have done much worse (and probably, I fear, may do worse with the next nominee). While they hope Roberts doesn't swing the court too sharply to the right, a majority of Americans think that the President should probably get the benefit of the doubt on a clearly qualified nominee.A plausible argument can be made that too much is at stake here and now, in terms of privacy issues, civil rights, and civil liberties, to give John Roberts the benefit of the doubt. That certainly was the operating assumption of the advocacy groups involved in the nomination battle. I shared enough of these concerns that I voted against Roberts on the floor this morning. But short of mounting an all-out filibuster -- a quixotic fight I would not have supported; a fight I believe Democrats would have lost both in the Senate and in the court of public opinion; a fight that would have been difficult for Democratic senators defending seats in states like North Dakota and Nebraska that are essential for Democrats to hold if we hope to recapture the majority; and a fight that would have effectively signaled an unwillingness on the part of Democrats to confirm any Bush nominee, an unwillingness which I believe would have set a dangerous precedent for future administrations -- blocking Roberts was not a realistic option.In such circumstances, attacks on Pat Leahy, Russ Feingold and the other Democrats who, after careful consideration, voted for Roberts make no sense. Russ Feingold, the only Democrat to vote not only against war in Iraq but also against the Patriot Act, doesn't become complicit in the erosion of civil liberties simply because he chooses to abide by a deeply held and legitimate view that a President, having won a popular election, is entitled to some benefit of the doubt when it comes to judicial appointments. Like it or not, that view has pretty strong support in the Constitution's design.The same principle holds with respect to issues other than judicial nominations. My colleague from Illinois, Dick Durbin, spoke out forcefully - and voted against - the Iraqi invasion. He isn't somehow transformed into a "war supporter" - as I've heard some anti-war activists suggest - just because he hasn't called for an immediate withdrawal of American troops. He may be simply trying to figure out, as I am, how to ensure that U.S. troop withdrawals occur in such a way that we avoid all-out Iraqi civil war, chaos in the Middle East, and much more costly and deadly interventions down the road. A pro-choice Democrat doesn't become anti-choice because he or she isn't absolutely convinced that a twelve-year-old girl should be able to get an operation without a parent being notified. A pro-civil rights Democrat doesn't become complicit in an anti-civil rights agenda because he or she questions the efficacy of certain affirmative action programs. And a pro-union Democrat doesn't become anti-union if he or she makes a determination that on balance, CAFTA will help American workers more than it will harm them.Or to make the point differently: How can we ask Republican senators to resist pressure from their right wing and vote against flawed appointees like John Bolton, if we engage in similar rhetoric against Democrats who dissent from our own party line? How can we expect Republican moderates who are concerned about the nation's fiscal meltdown to ignore Grover Norquist's threats if we make similar threats to those who buck our party orthodoxy? I am not drawing a facile equivalence here between progressive advocacy groups and right-wing advocacy groups. The consequences of their ideas are vastly different. Fighting on behalf of the poor and the vulnerable is not the same as fighting for homophobia and Halliburton. But to the degree that we brook no dissent within the Democratic Party, and demand fealty to the one, "true" progressive vision for the country, we risk the very thoughtfulness and openness to new ideas that are required to move this country forward. When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive "checklist," then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted. Beyond that, by applying such tests, we are hamstringing our ability to build a majority. We won't be able to transform the country with such a polarized electorate. Because the truth of the matter is this: Most of the issues this country faces are hard. They require tough choices, and they require sacrifice. The Bush Administration and the Republican Congress may have made the problems worse, but they won't go away after President Bush is gone. Unless we are open to new ideas, and not just new packaging, we won't change enough hearts and minds to initiate a serious energy or fiscal policy that calls for serious sacrifice. We won't have the popular support to craft a foreign policy that meets the challenges of globalization or terrorism while avoiding isolationism and protecting civil liberties. We certainly won't have a mandate to overhaul a health care policy that overcomes all the entrenched interests that are the legacy of a jerry-rigged health care system. And we won't have the broad political support, or the effective strategies, required to lift large numbers of our fellow citizens out of numbing poverty.The bottom line is that our job is harder than the conservatives' job. After all, it's easy to articulate a belligerent foreign policy based solely on unilateral military action, a policy that sounds tough and acts dumb; it's harder to craft a foreign policy that's tough and smart. It's easy to dismantle government safety nets; it's harder to transform those safety nets so that they work for people and can be paid for. It's easy to embrace a theological absolutism; it's harder to find the right balance between the legitimate role of faith in our lives and the demands of our civic religion. But that's our job. And I firmly believe that whenever we exaggerate or demonize, or oversimplify or overstate our case, we lose. Whenever we dumb down the political debate, we lose. A polarized electorate that is turned off of politics, and easily dismisses both parties because of the nasty, dishonest tone of the debate, works perfectly well for those who seek to chip away at the very idea of government because, in the end, a cynical electorate is a selfish electorate.Let me be clear: I am not arguing that the Democrats should trim their sails and be more "centrist." In fact, I think the whole "centrist" versus "liberal" labels that continue to characterize the debate within the Democratic Party misses the mark. Too often, the "centrist" label seems to mean compromise for compromise sake, whereas on issues like health care, energy, education and tackling poverty, I don't think Democrats have been bold enough. But I do think that being bold involves more than just putting more money into existing programs and will instead require us to admit that some existing programs and policies don't work very well. And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans). Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will. This is more than just a matter of "framing," although clarity of language, thought, and heart are required. It's a matter of actually having faith in the American people's ability to hear a real and authentic debate about the issues that matter.Finally, I am not arguing that we "unilaterally disarm" in the face of Republican attacks, or bite our tongue when this Administration screws up. Whenever they are wrong, inept, or dishonest, we should say so clearly and repeatedly; and whenever they gear up their attack machine, we should respond quickly and forcefully. I am suggesting that the tone we take matters, and that truth, as best we know it, be the hallmark of our response. My dear friend Paul Simon used to consistently win the votes of much more conservative voters in Southern Illinois because he had mastered the art of "disagreeing without being disagreeable," and they trusted him to tell the truth. Similarly, one of Paul Wellstone's greatest strengths was his ability to deliver a scathing rebuke of the Republicans without ever losing his sense of humor and affability. In fact, I would argue that the most powerful voices of change in the country, from Lincoln to King, have been those who can speak with the utmost conviction about the great issues of the day without ever belittling those who opposed them, and without denying the limits of their own perspectives.In that spirit, let me end by saying I don't pretend to have all the answers to the challenges we face, and I look forward to periodic conversations with all of you in the months and years to come. I trust that you will continue to let me and other Democrats know when you believe we are screwing up. And I, in turn, will always try and show you the respect and candor one owes his friends and allies. |
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Tiger Beer
Joined: 07 Feb 2003
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 11:12 am Post subject: |
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*old post*!
Last edited by Tiger Beer on Sat Jul 26, 2008 8:29 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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VanIslander
Joined: 18 Aug 2003
Location: Geoje, Hadong, Tongyeong,... now in a small coastal island town outside Gyeongsangnamdo!
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| Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 1:26 pm Post subject: |
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Add seasoning.
He just needs to look older.
Age would endear him more to conservative-minded folk in swing states. |
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