Look guys, I’ve already got a lot on my plate... I work full time (and NOT as a blogger), I’m raising two WONDERFUL young children, and I already spend about 4 or 5 hours an evening on sites like this fighting the good fight for Hillary.
But you’ve really dropped the ball when it comes to vetting the candidates and asking the tough questions re policy and experience. The thing is... Bill Clinton said something the other day that rang true for a lot of us, and I hear tell folks are twisting the HELL out of his words and calling him – of all things – a racist
Here’s what President Clinton said last weekend at a campaign stop in New Hampshire after Saturday’s debate...
Make the jump, there’s more...
Now I’m sorry but did ANYbody hear anything about race or ethnicity, or Obama’s overall campaign in that segment? Because that reference to fairy tales is what Obama’s camp is trying to use in playing the race card today.
Look I’ll admit there’s plenty of reason for minorities to be sensitive to racism in our society. But in the case of the above video, there’s simply no there, there. They saw how women responded to Hillary’s show of vulnerability and they’re playing the race card now - at a well-chosen point in this campaign to try to drum up support in the lead-up to the South Carolina primaries. President Clinton was not referring to Sen. Obama’s campaign as a fairy tale. He in no way implied that a black man can’t make it to the White House.
Simply put – his comments had nothing to do with race.
What he was talking about (and you’ll see this in the video if you actually take a look at it) is how the MSM have given him a pass when it comes to looking at his record on Iraq over the years. This issue is the coernerstone of Obama’s campaign – he’s used it time and time again to bash Hillary over the head in his attempt to climb up and over her in the polls.
So if you guys in the MSM won’t do your job, I guess I’ll have to. Sigh... as if I didn’t already have enough to do today...
Obama’s been making an awful lot of noise over a speech he gave on October 26, 2002 at an anti-war rally. But what I don’t hear you asking about is what he’s done since giving that speech – showing us that he’s truly our champion when it comes to ending the war in Iraq, and bringing our troops home in the swiftest and safest manner possible.
And before you jump down my throat for having the temerity to ask this question... he IS making that speech a cornerstone in his campaign, so I think it’s a fair thing to ask.
Take a look at the whole speech. He gave this speech about 2 weeks after the vote on the Iraq resolution – and yet nowhere in that speech do we see even a word about the vote, the resolution, nor does he decry those who voted for that resolution.
And let’s face it... he hasn’t done much since. At least until he decided to run for president.
Now in that speech he said the following (which seemed to be pretty accurate back then)...
I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.
In other words, this thing could have gone on for a looooooooooong time and cost us who knows how much in blood and treasure. Again, a pretty justified assumption back then. At any rate, that was then, this is now. From his appearance on CNN this week...
It was not clear that President Bush was going to drag this out over several years.
Take a look at a clip from that CNN interview...
Hmmmmmmmmm... I’ll let that little bit of backpeddling speak for itself.
One more quote from that speech 5 years ago...
I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.
Yeah... until you get to the Senate and start voting to pay for those wars.
Since joining the Senate, he’s voted in lockstep with Hillary on Iraq to provide whatever funding was requested, so he must have known that (given the kind of money they were asking for and that it was being used to take in resources and build things that were going to be in Iraq for years to come) that we were going to be there for "several years". Right? I mean he is a pretty sharp guy after all.
Now for someone who’s so proud of that speech from 2002, he wasn’t so proud of it when he ran for the senate the next year. APPARENTLY, he scrubbed any record of this speech from his campaign’s website during that senate race...
Source - In Search of the Real Barack Obama: Can a Black Senate Candidate Resist the DLC? Originally published in Black Commentator June 5, 2003.
Somebody else's brand of politics appears to have intruded on Obama's campaign. For a while the whole speech could be found on Obama's campaign web site, a key statement of principle for a serious US Senate candidate in an election season when the President's party threatens the world with permanent war and pre-emptive invasion, and cows US citizens with fear mongering, color coded alerts, secret detentions and the abrogation of constitutional liberties. Although Obama may have appeared at meetings of other citizens opposed to the war or let them use his name, no further public statements from the candidate on these important issues have appeared.
Then, a few weeks ago, Barack Obama's heartfelt statement of principled opposition to lawless militarism and the rule of fear was stricken without explanation from his campaign web site, and replaced with mild expressions of "anxiety".
A diary up on MyDD today called Where Was Obama?, by Artificial Intelligence notes that Obama also took a pass on several opportunities to jump on board the anti-war bandwagon once he got to the Senate. He reminds us that since joining the Senate, Obama’s had ample opportunity to continue where his speech left off, and failed miserably in taking the lead in a cause he now claims as his own. Take a look...
In his three years in the Senate he has kept his head safely below the parapet, leaving two congressional colleagues - Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania - to spearhead opposition to the war on Capitol Hill. In 2006 he voted against a Senate resolution calling for the withdrawal of troops and has also voted to continue funding the war.
What jumped out at me here was the reference to Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.). On November 17, 2005, Murtha made a statement to the press in which he called for the immediate redeployment of U.S. troops in Iraq and to bring the troops home.
Here was the perfect time for Sen. Obama to jump on board. He did not.
Almost immediately, swiftboating attacks were launched against Murtha by several of the same individuals involved in the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks on Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Again, this was the perfect time for Sen. Obama to jump on board, particularly since it was Sen. Kerry who had given him the opportunity to speak at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a speech by the way which helped launch his own presidential campaign.
He’d just given the keynote speech at his party’s convention where John Kerry was officially chosen as our nominee for President, and he remained silent when the Swiftobaters attacked him relentlessly after the convention and right through to the November election.
All those opportunities to stand up for what he now says he’s believed in all along, and he took a pass each and every time.
He didn’t mention the war in Iraq (except for the speech 5 years ago) until he realized he could use this issue against his opponents in his bid to become our next president.
I found some more interesting information on the FactHub guys - take a look...
Fact Check : Sen. Obama’s Iraq War Record
1/9/2008 2:50:08 PM
This morning, Sen. Barack Obama claimed that President Clinton "made several misleading statements about my record" on Iraq. Actually, everything President Clinton said was true:
It is wrong that Senator Obama got to go through 15 debates trumpeting his superior judgment and how he has been against the war every year, enumerating the years, and never got asked one time -- not once -- well, how could you say that when you said in 2004 you didn't know how you would have voted on the resolution, you said in 2004 there was no difference between you and George Bush on the war, and you took that speech you're now running on off your Web site in 2004, and there is no difference in your voting record and Hillary's ever since.
In 2004, Sen. Obama said he didn’t know how he would have voted on the Iraq War resolution.
‘When asked about Senators Kerry and Edwards' votes on the Iraq war, Obama said, "I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.’
In 2004, Sen. Obama also said there was little difference between his position and George Bush’s position on Iraq -
In a meeting with Chicago Tribune reporters at the Democratic National Convention, Obama said, "On Iraq, on paper, there's not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry administration as there would have been a year ago. [...] There's not much of a difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage." (Chicago Tribune, 07/27/04)
While running for Senate, Sen. Obama acknowledged that he took his anti-war speech off his campaign website, calling it "dated" -
Specifically, State Senator Obama maintains that an October 2002 anti-war speech was removed from his campaign web site because "the speech was dated once the formal phase of the war was over, and my staff's desire to continually provide fresh news clips."
Finally, Sen. Obama and Hillary have almost identical voting records on Iraq -
In fact, Obama's Senate voting record on Iraq is nearly identical to Clinton's. Over the two years Obama has been in the Senate, the only Iraq-related vote on which they differed was the confirmation earlier this year of General George Casey to be Chief of Staff of the Army, which Obama voted for and Clinton voted against. (ABC News, 5/17/07)
Now for if you want to find a great point by point rebuttal of the rest of those ridiculous charges of racism which have been leveled against the Clintons, you might want to check out something just posted by Taylor Marsh, who does a great job of knocking this BS down. She closes with the following...
The Obama campaign started playing the race card immediately after Obama lost New Hampshire with Jackson Jr., then upped the dialogue with Dyson, going further with the above press release. Playing the race card before South Carolina? It fits right in with the ugly politics that is regularly seen in that state every time the presidential primaries roll around.
So there you have it MSM... all tied up in a neat little package for you. And you didn’t have to lift a finger.
Now if you don’t mind... I’ve got to go tuck my kids in and give them a kiss goodnight. And feed the cat and throw in a load of laundry and unload the dishwasher...
But you keep your feet up on yer desk there and finish that 8th cup of coffee, ok?
Cross-posted at MyDD