Barack Obama!

[2020hindsight]

Re: Barack 2008!

Report on Barack Obama's books and comments on cocaine use 11 years ago: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/02/AR2007010201359_pf.html

noi - you could be right, some might give him a tick for honesty - some might give him a cross (... and probably the ones carrying crosses who preach forgiveness )

In the book, Obama acknowledges that he used cocaine as a high school student but rejected heroin. "Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it. Not smack, though," he says.

In an interview during his Senate race two years ago, Obama said he admitted using drugs because he thought it was important for "young people who are already in circumstances that are far more difficult than mine to know that you can make mistakes and still recover.

 

[noirua]

Re: Barack 2008!

Hi Doris, I see you've done a lot of work on your last post about cocaine etc., and as said, it won't have any bearing on his efforts to become President.
I believe the leader of the Conservative party, David Cameron, in the UK, had drug abuse accusations levelled at him and he survived it with ease
Followed the approach that George W Bush took.

 

[noirua]

Re: Barack 2008!

Odds of becoming President of the United States: http://www.oddschecker.com/specials...presidential-election/to-be-elected-president

Odds of becoming Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party: http://www.oddschecker.com/specials...n/us-presidential-election/democrat-candidate

 

[Doris]

Re: Barack 2008!

Delegate scores updated 45 minutes ago:

Obama:
Pledged: 1140
Superdelegates: 161
Total: 1301

Clinton:
Pledged: 1005
Superdelegates: 234
Total: 1239

So on pledged delegates Obama is ahead 135.

Including superdelegates (who can change their mind up until the DNC in Denver in August)... Obama is ahead 62.

Only 724 to go to win the nomination.
________________________________________
From: Barack Obama [mailto:info@barackobama.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 20 February 2008 3:36 PM
To: Doris *******
Subject: What tonight's win means

Doris --

Today, the people of Wisconsin voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new kind of politics.

They rejected an onslaught of negative attacks and attempts to distract them from the common concerns we all have about the direction of our country.

No doubt we'll hear much more of these attacks and distractions in the days to come.

But the noise of these tired, old political games will not drown out the voices of millions calling for change.

We won't know until late tonight the results of today's Hawaii caucus, but we'll let you know how that turns out tomorrow.

If we win in Hawaii, it will be ten straight victories -- a streak no one thought possible, and the best position we can be in when Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont vote on March 4th.

Thank you for making this possible,

Barack


Paid for by Obama for America
This email was sent to: doris.*******@bigpond.com

 

[Doris]

Re: Barack 2008!

Odds of becoming President of the United States: http://www.oddschecker.com/specials...presidential-election/to-be-elected-president

Odds of becoming Presidential nominee of the Democratic Party: http://www.oddschecker.com/specials...n/us-presidential-election/democrat-candidate

Thanks for this Noirua!

I can't make any money out of Obama!
Wish I'd seen these sites a year ago!

Kidding... Not!
A much better bet than my small cap specs have been!

 

[wayneL]

Re: Barack 2008!

Well if Barrak isn't President at the next election, I'll run backwards to Warsaw in the nuddy in winter.

Let's hope he's a positive influence in the world and shows us cynics a thing or two.

Godspeed.

 

[Doris]

Re: Barack 2008!

Obama wins Hawaii caucuses

(2 hours ago)

Maybe they should've called it " Hawaii 10-0," as Sen. Barack Obama now has ten straight wins after besting Sen. Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Hawaii caucuses.

Neither Obama nor Clinton campaigned in person for Hawaii's 20 delegate votes, but both recently had surrogates in the 50th state -- Clinton employed daughter Chelsea and Obama had half-sister Maya Soetero-Ng appear on his behalf. Obama, who was born and spent part of his youth on Hawaii, ran radio ads in recent weeks stressing his "native son" credentials.

On Tuesday night, in an e-mail to his supporters before the Hawaii victory was announced, Obama said winning there could foretell future successes: "If we win in Hawaii, it will be ten straight victories -- a streak no one thought possible, and the best position we can be in when Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont vote on March 4th."

Ohio and Texas vote next on March 4 - 370 convention delegates in all - and even some of Clinton's supporters concede she must win one, and possibly both, to remain competitive. Two smaller states, Vermont and Rhode Island, also have primaries that day.

With the votes counted in all but one of Wisconsin's 3,570 precincts, Obama won 58 percent of the vote to 41 percent for Clinton.

With more than 70 percent of the vote counted in Hawaii, Obama was winning 75 percent to 24 percent for Clinton.

Wisconsin offered 74 national convention delegates. There were 20 delegates at stake in Hawaii.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/7323450
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-080220obama-hawaii,1,5423652.story

 

[Whiskers]

Re: Barack 2008!

Didn't know much about Obama, and nothing of his wife. Little I have seen they both look pretty good, sort of brimming with confidence.

Getting the impression Obama is being seen as a fresh new leaf whereas Hillary seems to be suffering a little from the 'estableshment' syndrome.

Assuming it is Obama v M'cain... probably landslide Obama, I think.

 

[noirua]

Re: Barack 2008!

Didn't know much about Obama, and nothing of his wife. Little I have seen they both look pretty good, sort of brimming with confidence.

Getting the impression Obama is being seen as a fresh new leaf whereas Hillary seems to be suffering a little from the 'estableshment' syndrome.

Assuming it is Obama v M'cain... probably landslide Obama, I think.

John McCain should have more time than Obama to prepare for the Presidential Election and will also have a cash mountain left over. McCain will have to give the running mate factor a very careful look at, as Mike Huckabee isn't his favoured partner but may grab votes where he has no chance. Mitt Romney can raise loads of cash and may throw a bundle of his own in if he thinks the Vice-Presidential job could be his.
Neither are favoured by the bookies though and Kathleen Sebelius looks favourite here.

 

[wayneL]

Re: Barack 2008!

Another view, from the Times (UK).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article3412540.ece

Warning: Obama is dangerous
The senator and his wife, as this week has shown, are classic European-style leftwingers
Gerard Baker

For most ordinary Americans, those not encumbered with an expensive education or infected by prolonged exposure to cosmopolitan heterodoxy, patriotism is a consequence of birth.

Their chests swell with pride every time they hear the national anthem at sporting events. They fill up with understandable emotion whenever they see a report on television about the tragic heroics of some soldier or Marine who gave his life in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Foreigners don't have to like America - and they've certainly exercised that freedom in the past few years. But most Americans can distinguish between the transience of policy failure and the permanence of the national ideal.

And surely even critics of the US could scarcely deny that there have been real causes for American pride in the past 25 years: the fall of the Berlin Wall; the victory in the first Gulf War in 1991; the nation's unity in grief and resolve after September 11. Heck, I suspect most Americans got a small buzz of patriotic pride this week when they heard that one of their multimillion-dollar missiles had shot a dead but dangerous satellite travelling at 17,000 miles per hour out of the sky so that it fell harmlessly to Earth.
Underdog Obama outpaces Hillary

But not, apparently, Michelle Obama, wife of the man who is now the putative Democratic candidate for US president, and at this point favourite to succeed to that job. In what might be the most revealing statement made by any political figure so far in this campaign season, Mrs Obama caused a stir this week. She said that the success of her husband Barack's campaign had marked the first time in her adult life that she had felt pride in her country.

This, even by the astonishingly self-absorbed standards of politicians and their families, is a remarkably narrow view of what makes a country great. And though she later half-heartedly tried to retract the remark it was a statement pregnant with meaning for the presidential election campaign.

Now, to be fair to Mrs Obama, she would surely have a point if she had said that it was a source of incomparable pride to her and all African-Americans that in a country with a long and baleful history of racial discrimination, one of their own was within serious range of becoming president. All but the most irredeemably racist Americans would surely agree with that.

But that was not what she said. She said this was the only time in her adult life that she had felt pride in America.

It was instructive for two reasons. First, it reinforced the growing sense of unease that even some Obama supporters have felt about the increasingly messianic nature of the candidate's campaign. There's always been a Second Coming quality about Mr Obama's rhetoric. The claim that his electoral successes in places like Nebraska and Wisconsin might transcend all that America has achieved in its history can only add to that worry.

Secondly, and more importantly, I suspect it reveals much about what the Obama family really thinks about the kind of nation that America is. Mrs Obama is surely not alone in thinking not very much about what America has been or done in the past quarter century or more. In fact, it is a trope of the left wing of the Democratic party that America has been a pretty wretched sort of place.

There is a caste of left-wing Americans who wish essentially and in all honesty that their country was much more like France. They wish it had much higher levels of taxation and government intervention, that it had much higher levels of welfare, that it did not have such a “militaristic” approach to foreign policy. Above all, that its national goals were dictated, not by the dreadful halfwits who inhabit godforsaken places like Kansas and Mississippi, but by the counsels of the United Nations.

Though Mr Obama has done a good job, as all recent serious Democrats have done, of emphasising his belief in American virtues, his record and his programme suggest he is firmly in line with this wing of his party.

This, I think, not his inexperience in public office, is the principal threat to Mr Obama's campaign. His increasingly desperate opponent, Hillary Clinton, keeps hammering away that his message is all talk and no substance - and she was joined this week by Mr Obama's likely Republican opponent in the November general election, John McCain.

But if you listen to Mr Obama's speeches, it is not the lack of substance but the quality of it that ought to worry Americans. His victory speech after his latest primary win in Wisconsin this week was a case in point.

There was no shortage of proposals. He plans large increases in government spending on health and education. He wants to tax the rich more to pay for it. He is against companies using the opportunities of free markets to restructure their operations in the US. He is vehemently protectionist. He continues to insist, despite the growing evidence that this left-wing nostrum would be lunacy, that the US must pull its troops out of Iraq with the utmost dispatch.

While he speaks of the need for Americans to move beyond partisanship (“We are not blue states or red states, but the United States” is a campaign meme), when you cut through the verbiage there is nothing to suggest he believes anything that is seriously at odds with the far Left of his party. If you think about it for a second, it's not really an accident that he has been endorsed by the likes of Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson.

Though he talks with great eloquence about the future, he sounds for all the world like one of the long line of Democrats from George McGovern to Walter Mondale to Michael Dukakis, who became history by espousing policies and striking a rhetorical pose that was well out of the mainstream of American politics.

America is certainly moving left in the post-George Bush era. The long period of conservative ascendancy is clearly over, buried by a Republican Party of recent years that has preached intolerance and practised incompetence. That a new era in American politics is beginning is not in doubt. But are Americans really ready to leap all the way across in one go to embrace a European-style Left?

 

[Doris]

Re: Barack 2008!

Hear from Michelle herself what she said and meant:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...ewsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

Evil, nasty people pull words out of context and put their own slant forward to twist the words of honest decent people.

Usually they are people with dysfunctional, unfulfilled lives, with their own evil, nasty agenda... who feel they are a success if they can tear down someone who actually achieves something.

Michelle was proud of her country because people got off their backsides and went out and made an effort to get what they want...
( IMO... instead of just wanting then complaining when they got what they did not want.)

They turned out to vote!

It doesn't matter what you want. It matters that you get what you want!

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: Barack 2008!

Wisconsin???

I didn't know they had telephones in Wisconsin. Do they speak English there?

I think Wyoming and Wisconsin are only a couple of states apart, yes?

We have a bloke here name of Sol Trujillo from Wyoming - reckons he knows something about phones -
- sure hope he does!
he just put his salary up from 11mill to 20 mill

PS he admits he's investing heaviliy (to the max allowable, lol $2500 - yeah right ) in McCain's campaign

 

[gordon2007]

Re: Barack 2008!

Just curious, why do people care so much about what happens in american politics? I understand what happens there can affect things here. But the fact is he hasn't even won his own party yet and there seems to be such a huge following of him.

I guess what astounds me is so many people have a negative opinion of the states and so many of those same people say they don't care about the states or the people there and wish their news and things would stop be front press yet again here on an australian investment page there is a huge thread on american politics.

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: Barack 2008!

Just curious, why do people care so much about what happens in american politics? I understand what happens there can affect things here. But the fact is he hasn't even won his own party yet and there seems to be such a huge following of him.

I guess what astounds me is so many people have a negative opinion of the states and so many of those same people say they don't care about the states or the people there and wish their news and things would stop be front press yet again here on an australian investment page there is a huge thread on american politics.

honestly don't know gordon
Maybe ask Sol Trujillo m8 lol

Are we allowed to say "just for fun" ?

PS seriously though, we should surely have been more concerned when
a) Bush won in such controversail circumstances, and
b) then proceeded to drag us and the world by the nose into Iraq and the biggest mess since ... no precedent . humpty dumpty maybe? .

reminds me of a Far Side cartoon .. this team of kings me trying to put these bits of eggshell together again ...... and the chief of the kings men says " ok the horses want to have another go now"

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: Barack 2008!

PS gordon,
you got me thinking -

I'm driving home , and ABC Radio National must have spent 10 minutes talking about Obama and Clinton's debate - and McCain allegedly having it off with a lobbyist (bit like "American President" I guess)

still - news / entertainment - it all starts to merge after a while.

 

[wayneL]

Re: Barack 2008!

Hear from Michelle herself what she said and meant:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...ewsletter&wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

Evil, nasty people pull words out of context and put their own slant forward to twist the words of honest decent people.

Usually they are people with dysfunctional, unfulfilled lives, with their own evil, nasty agenda... who feel they are a success if they can tear down someone who actually achieves something.

Michelle was proud of her country because people got off their backsides and went out and made an effort to get what they want...
( IMO... instead of just wanting then complaining when they got what they did not want.)

They turned out to vote!

It doesn't matter what you want. It matters that you get what you want!

Doris,

You've almost got religion over this guy. The author of that article certainly did have an agenda, that's clear as the adoration on your face. But a few points are fair nevertheless.

A little cynicism is healthy. En masse it helps keep the bastards honest.

gordon2007,

I agree. I resent having US politics shoved down my throat ad nauseum. If there are agendas out there, is there an agenda in that? I'd much prefer to hear how the Tories have Gordon McBean on a skewer.

 

[Julia]

Re: Barack 2008!

Another view, from the Times (UK).

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/gerard_baker/article3412540.ece

Thanks, Wayne. Good article.
The extract below describes my feeling about Obama's campaign.

"......the growing sense of unease that even some Obama supporters have felt about the increasingly messianic nature of the candidate's campaign. There's always been a Second Coming quality about Mr Obama's rhetoric. The claim that his electoral successes in places like Nebraska and Wisconsin might transcend all that America has achieved in its history can only add to that worry."

His followers are becoming almost hysterical in their devotion.

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: Barack 2008!

If you folk want ASF to be a one-dimensional chatroom then delete threads like this.

Maybe the ABC would be kind enough to delete 10% of their news items as well on the same grounds.

sheesh - I'm getting tired of people saying they are getting tired of an interest in US politics - to each his own for chissake.

 

[wayneL]

Re: Barack 2008!

If you folk want ASF to be a one-dimensional chatroom then delete threads like this.

Maybe the ABC would be kind enough to delete 10% of their news items as well on the same grounds.

sheesh - I'm getting tired of people saying they are getting tired of an interest in US politics - to each his own for chissake.

Oh please! You're tilting at windmills again.

The truth is that there is more coverage of US politics than local.

Answer me one question: This isn't even a presidential election, it is a preselection contest for candidacy. How much coverage of that is there in local politics?

Not as much. Now the yanks can f-off and argue amongst themselves who they want to run for El Presidente. It doesn't warrant more than a brief report every now and then. When we get to the real game, the actual election, we might be a little more interested.

If you really want to be US-centric, go to CNNNNN FFS!

 

[2020hindsight]

Re: Barack 2008!

Wayne
that's your opinion - ok?
just one man's opinion