33 comments

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  Janet Shan

  1 year ago

  Funny how President Bush seems to have forgotten the mess he created in Iraq by not going through diplomatic means to unseat Saddam Hussein. The country is in such a deplorable state that it is laughable when he tries to chide anyone for anything. John McCain is someone I cannot trust and cannot bring myself to ever vote for had I been a Republican. He has flip flopped on the matter of Hamas.
  
  
  Check out my blog at www.blackpoliticalthought.com</br>
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  Submariner

  1 year ago

  Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I seriously think that Obama is going to choose Chuck Hagel as his running mate. Note his acknowledgment of a bipartisanship approach to foreign policy while objecting vigorously to Bush/McCain. While speaking of failed Bush policies he avoids disparaging Republicans.
  
  
  The old ways will not do, and Senator Obama is changing the political calculus. Hagel represents the vanguard of Republicans who are sensible and don't need controversial cultural issues to provide legitimacy. Also with a distinguished Vietnam War record of his own, Hagel is the perfect counter to McCain. Additionally, unlike Wesley Clark, Hagel has the proven skill for tough negotiation which is critical in Washington.
  
  
  
  As tough as the primary was, this fall campaign will prove to be more arduous. This is no time for political neophytes like Clark or servile adherence to a safe, little known Midwestern Democrat. Obama needs the big joker to win this thing. Only a bold choice like Hagel will solidly confirm Obama's vision and suck the oxygen from McCain. Obama/Hagel '08.
  
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  nk

  1 year ago

  O-man represents! Bring. it. on.
  
  
  @ submariner, he doesn't need Hagel. He is quite capable of sucking McCain's oxygen supply as he proved today.
  
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  D.

  1 year ago

  Janet,
  I guess UN Resolution 1441 doesn't count, huh?
  
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  Torrance Stephens bka All-Mi-T

  1 year ago

  bush and mccain one in the same but i respect mccain, he didnt dodge war
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  rikyrah

  1 year ago

  When I read the comments over at Ben Smith, I was like, HELL YEAH...
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  Submariner

  1 year ago

  Au contraire, NK. Hillary Rodham Clinton has provided the GOP with a blueprint. That is a relentless, excoriating attack on Obama's character. HRC's mistake was that she started the scorched earth strategy too late. It would have been different if she seized the initiative. She made great but ultimately futile progress. Republican operatives will not wait for Barack to gain momentum before eviscerating him.
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  Craig Hickman

  1 year ago

  Obama put it down in his press conference. Smart, self-assured, competing. And when he flashes that 1,000 watt smile, any tension in the room evaporates.
  
  
  He's a badass.
  
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  Craig Hickman

  1 year ago

  submariner, it's not going to matter. Obama's character is on display for those who want to see it to see it.
  
  
  The politics of personal destruction is so yesterday.
  
  
  
  It's rusty artillery in a new war.
  
  
  
  The GOP is fucked. And it knows it.
  
  
  
  It's trying to build a new "brand."
  
  
  
  Ha.
  
  
  
  Well, Peggy Noonan is having none of it.
  
  
  
  Pity Party
  
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  Adam

  1 year ago

  Ain't nothing more fun then watchin' Obama slap these fools around. Nothin'.
  
  
  And I think this affirms Obama's point that once Sen. Clinton was handled the "nice guy" thing was going to be put on the shelf as well.
  
  
  
  Over 70% of this country believes we are headed in the wrong direction, everytime McCain/Bush speaks Obama is going to remind them of that.
  
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  Craig Hickman

  1 year ago

  The new GOP/CNN strategy: incite assassination.
  
  
  Huckabbe jokes about Obama ducking a gunman
  
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  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  If Obama believes the president’s appeasement formulation was wrong, fine; let him make a substantive argument for why that’s the case. And if he wants to present a careful argument for why as president he would meet without preconditions with the leader of not only Iran but also with the leaders of Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea, all in his first year, that’s fine, too. In fact, it would be a welcome addition to the presidential debate. But for Obama to lash out in the manner he has is silly and unbecoming.
  
  
  What is driving this response? Probably the belief by Obama that he’s vulnerable to being portrayed as weak on national security matters and he wants to prove that he can’t be “swift-boated.” But Obama’s response will achieve neither aim and, in fact, it makes Obama look thin-skinned, a bit rattled, and prickly. Indeed, Obama’s response seems so 1990s. His words and the words of the campaign could have come straight from the lips of Paul Begala or other former Clinton attack dogs.
  
  
  
  Obama and the Democrat’s DefCon 1 response to the president’s speech to the Knesset is a perfect illustration of the kind of tiresome “old politics” we really don’t need. The early media reports I heard of Bush’s speech didn’t even mention the appeasement line; it was only after Obama’s campaign and other Democrats exploded in (manufactured) fury that it became a political issue at all. Or, perhaps more accurately, a “distraction.” Which is exactly what I thought Obama was trying to move us away from.
  
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  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  Great riposte to Bush & McBush by Obama. That said, the *content* of his speech re the Middle East wasn't all that far-removed from the conventional wisdom. Warning of sanctions against Iran for a nuclear program that every reputable intelligence report has said is for peaceful purposes ain't all that ethical. Remember what Bill Clinton's sanctions did to hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the 1990s. It's very necessary to praise Obama's strong and assured responses to the right-wing bullshit, but let's also pay attention to the policies he's actually advocating here.
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  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  Negotiation buys Iran time to build a nuclear waepon which it intends to use on Israel. It is the stated goal of Iran to wipe Israel off the map. I don't need any 'intelligence agency' to tell me this is a hostile regime. Ahmadjinedad is serious.
  
  
  Iran will start(or should I say escalate) war at the place and time of its choosing and there is nothing we can do to stop them. Threat of retaliation(if they even believe we have the will to make good on the threat) means little to a leader and a culture which embraces martyrdom and apocolyptic visions of the future.
  
  
  
  Negotiation implies that the involved parties want to resolve their differences. when has Iran ever stated its desire to do anything other than destroy Israel?
  
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  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  ow is it, wonders CJ, that he can vow in one breath not to talk to terrorists and then in the next remind us that he will talk to Iran? Simple: Because as moronic as it may seem, it’s politically convenient for him right now to distinguish between “terrorists” and state sponsors of terror. That’s the whole point of his phony Iran/Hamas distinction, which is no distinction at all given that one of those two bankrolls the other. If he was half the honest broker he claims to be, he’d admit he’s drawing this line the way he is because (a) he needs to take a stand against some jihadist outfit to prove to pro-Israeli voters that he’s not the appeasement-minded milquetoast the right claims he is, and (b) given that Iran has vastly more regional leverage than Hamas plus the fact that he’s surely not going to deal with them militarily, he needs to preserve some way of dealing with them diplomatically. Hence the polite fiction that lets him accomplish both goals: Hamas = terrorist = no talking, Iran = head of state = “direct presidential diplomacy.” Much like his blowhard speech about race, it’s nothing but political expedience dressed up as something more thoughtful and principled. And the kicker? He ends by denouncing Bush and McCain for dishonesty — moments after repeating WaPo’s smear of Maverick’s position on Hamas.
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  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  Obama: Hezbollah and Hamas Have "Legitimate Claims"
  
  
  The U.S. needs a foreign policy that "looks at the root causes of problems and dangers." Obama compared Hezbollah to Hamas. Both need to be compelled to understand that "they're going down a blind alley with violence that weakens their legitimate claims." He knows these movements aren't going away anytime soon ("Those missiles aren't going to dissolve"), but "if they decide to shift, we're going to recognize that. That's an evolution that should be recognized."
  
  
  
  And just what are these "legitimate claims" that Obama mentions in talking with David Brooks of the New York Times?
  
  
  
  Is it that the existence of Israel is a catastrophe?
  
  
  
  Democratic presidential frontrunner Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director on the board of a nonprofit organization that granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe." (Obama has also reportedly spoken at fundraisers for Palestinians living in what the United Nations terms refugee camps.)
  
  
  
  The co-founder of the Arab group, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, is a harsh critic of Israel who reportedly worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization when it was labeled a terror group by the State Department.
  
  
  
  Khalidi held a fundraiser in 2000 for Obama's failed bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
  
  
  
  In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, at which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
  
  
  
  Ah, the Woods Fund. Where Barak served with his domestic terrorist friend, Bill Ayers of the Weather Underground, who along with his domestic terrorist (and Charles Manson fan) wife, Bernardine Dohrn, helped kick off Obama's political career at their house.
  
  
  
  Hamas' charter calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Islamic state, and says (in part):
  
  
  
  "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
  
  
  
  "The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up."
  
  
  
  "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors."
  
  
  
  Somehow, I don't think that is a change most Americans or Israelis can believe in.
  
  
  
  But what about Hezbollah?
  
  
  
  ...Hezbollah's ideology is inspired by Khomeini, the original leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. According to "The Hezbollah Program", a document that specifies Hezbollah's ideology, Hezbollah's main goals are to fight against "western imperialism", achieve the destruction of Israel, and establish Islamic rule in Jerusalem. It also supports the transformation of Lebanon into an Islamic state in the same spirit as Iran, which Hezbollah takes as the model of an Islamic state. In addition, the party glorifies suicide bombers as martyrs. It promotes violent resistance as a means to an end and teaches that "each of us is a fighting soldier". This ideology—which includes anti-Semitic, anti-western and anti-democratic dogma—is indoctrinated in Hezbollah's schools and kindergartens, which are free for all of Hezbollah's Shi'a supporters.
  
  
  
  I'd really like to know what is legitimate about the claims two terrorist organizations dedicated to the obliteration of Israel in the eyes of Barack Obama.
  
  
  
  Please, Barack... do tell.
  
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  Nquest

  1 year ago

  Obama: Hezbollah and Hamas Have "Legitimate Claims"
  
  
  
  
  Obama suggested that White resentment (aka White Backlash - i.e. white resistance to change) had a "legitimate" basis.
  
  
  
  
  
  At least he's consistent but my guess is you're not. I know I missed you calling on Obama to "tell" you what was up with that bs he had to say about White resentment in his speech on race, privileging it and painting them poor White folk as hapless VICTIMS excusing how they "scapegoat" both in that speech and in bitter-gate.
  
  
  
  
  
  But while we're posing questions about legitimate claims... I'd really like to know what is legitimate about Israel's claims.
  
  
  
  That Bible stuff don't count.
  
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  Setare

  1 year ago

  Just a clarification: I posted my comment at 1:27:00 PM (Fri, May 16) anonymously. I'm saying this and changing my handle to my first name (Setare) to make sure that my comment isn't thought to be from the same "anonymous" who's posting all the inflammatory stuff about Obama here.
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  submariner

  1 year ago

  What President Bush did was wreckless. The primacy of Israel in Middle Eastern affairs is sacrosanct no matter who occupies the White House. The president knows this. By using a foreign platform, the Knesset no less, to make a domestic partisan point Bush has encouraged Israel to take ill advised risks to protect itself. That is why he has been roundly criticized. To imply that Israel would be less secure if a Democrat is in office promotes Israel to make more aggressive manuevers with the obvious adverse outcomes.
  
  
  This is the sad legacy of the current president. Not merely the confluence of international and domestic disturbances which are arguably beyond his control. But the Rove doctrine of using every implement to advance partisan objectives. We saw the same thing in the actions of the Justice Department to target Democrats in public office. Bush certainly has a right and duty to lead his party to victory. However, that should not be done at the expense of inciting a global conflict which is what he did.
  
  
  
  As for my friends who think that Obama is immune to the politics of personal destruction, you are sadly mistaken. Karl Rove's greatest contribution was that you attack your enemy's strengths. So a tremendous intellect like Gore is mutated into a geek or a decorated war veteran like Kerry is called into doubt about the bona fides of said service. Conversely, your candidate's weaknesses become virtues. So G.W. Bush's inexperience and inarticulateness makes him more connected with the common man.
  
  
  
  At JJP it is all too easy to become enthralled with Obama's strengths and not see how they could be used against him. No doubt the political landscape is being realigned but don't become too carried away and think that Obama's considerable charm or guile will simply disarm his opponent. What will bring Obama victory is winning over Independents and disillusioned Republicans. Certainly Obama can and will compete nationally but Appalachia and Florida are probably out of reach. This means he needs to break into Republican strongholds and that will not happen because Barack is the man.
  
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  Nquest

  1 year ago

  Negotiation implies that the involved parties want to resolve their differences.
  
  
  There's no indication that Israel wants to do that. The are Israelis who openly state that the expulsion of Palestinians was necessary for the existence of the state of Israel to come into existence.
  
  
  
  Now, something about your culture might find that acceptable. Some "Americans" have that same attitude about Native Americans -- the trail of tears, the whole nine yards. But that's your bankrupt culture.
  
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  Nquest

  1 year ago

  Submariner,
  
  
  "Sacrosanct" is not enough.
  
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  Craig Hickman

  1 year ago

  I don't believe many people think Obama is immune from the politics of personal destruction.
  
  
  But the electorate might have developed some pretty powerful antibodies over the last 8 years.
  
  
  
  We'll find out.
  
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  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  Are you guys going to discuss the tape that GOP operatives have of Michelle Obama making Wright like statements at Trinity?
  
  
  I think if anything has been learned from the Wright debacle (and the Swiftboat affair and Al Gore invention the internet), you have to face this type of thing head on. The Gov of NY had the right idea, admit any wrongdoing before someone can use it against you.
  
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  Craig Hickman

  1 year ago

  Why don't you share some evidence of Michelle's alleged statements.
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  heartsandflowers

  1 year ago

  There would not be a concern over Iran having weapons to use against Israel if the gov't would change their policy and stop mistreating the Palestinians. Besides Israel has plenty of them and with all the other weapons and money the US gives to them they are quite capable of defending themselves. If you aren't doing anything wrong there'd be no need for over-reacting. That's what building relationships and constructive communications are for.
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  Anonymous

  1 year ago

  If Obama considers discussion of foreign policy “divisive”, then he should hie himself right back to Academia. Guess what, Senator? Presidential elections focus on foreign-policy principles, and if you can’t defend yours, then you have no business running for office.
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  andyfrombrooklyn

  1 year ago

  dear anonymi, get some names even numbers, you are hard to keep straight.
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  andyfrombrooklyn

  1 year ago

  i don't get the mccsame strategy. it does not seem likely to win. much better to stick with the generalised patriot smears. bad idea to get in to any specifics about mccsame policy. and how about the mccsame dreamer speech? about all the magical things that will happen after four years of mccsame. choose mccsame and everything is going to change for the better?
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  Craig Hickman

  1 year ago

  andyfrombrooklyn, McBush doesn't have a strategy. He's running scared and he'll say anything his people tell him to say based upon the polls or just to make sure he can have the last word in a "debate."
  
  
  I can't wait till Barack debates McBush head to head. If McBush gets through it without calling Barack a name, I'll be surprised.
  
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  andyfrombrooklyn

  1 year ago

  craig h., but why are his people telling him that? it would seem to me that some notable policy breaks with bush would revive the straight talk express theme. instead they seem intent on mimicking bush. just don't get it. but o.k. by me if they want to lose.
  bush's zionist appeasement rant took the focus off mccsame's dreamer speech. hoping the msm will take a closer look at it this weekend. talk about pie in the sky without any nuts and bolts.
  
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  Craig Hickman

  1 year ago

  Since when has the GOP been smart?
  
  
  For all the talk about Rovian tactic, Bush "won" both of his elections by thin margins even with all the swift boating, race baiting and gay baiting and voter suppression that took place during the last two elections.
  
  
  
  Since many of us know the Supreme Court handed Bush his first term and Ken Blackwell his second, Rovian politics may not be able to overcome the surge of the electorate this time out.
  
  
  
  The GOP is doing what it knows how to do (which isn't much) and they are hoping they'll get the same result.
  
  
  
  Hardheaded.
  
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  Nquest

  1 year ago

  There is no reason why the Anon posters can't type a simple name or serial number in their Anon post for distinction purposes. A few more characters won't hurt and it really shows a lack of respect for the most basic of common courtesy especially since JJP allows Anon posts which they don't have to.
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  Craig Hickman

  1 year ago

  nquest, I agree with you. But since so many of them are peddling false information and smears here, perhaps they're so paranoid that any identifier they might use will be decoded and their identities will be revealed.
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