The Obama Delusion

in the "Freedom from Fear" speech by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmar (Burmese) peace activist who was elected prime minister and then imprisoned by the military. She says:

"The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing the official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit the forces which produced the inequities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration." This is Lincolnesque.

I don???t know if anyone has seen this diary???but it is an excellent analysis of the 2 candidates. This research is simply AMAZING! It puts their congressional records side by side and shows why Obama is the candidate of the future. Please check this out for UNBIASED, OBJECTIVE research on the candidates.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/20/201332/807/36/4 58633

The author has raised only 2 issues for which he gives Obama's own proposals: Not raise retirement age, and no income tax for retirees making less than $50,000.00, which equates to a $1400.00 tax cut for 7 million retirees. We all know this is NOT going to help fix the S.S system, but WILL continue to burden our children with a broken system which consumes more and more tax dollars. This is not change.

perfect example of what i said earlier is President Carter trying to get the American people to become more energy independent in the late seventies as a matter of national security. He premised his proposals on the 'middle east problem'. ANyone around from that time knows how far he got with that......

THANK YOUfor finding this and posting for others! YES WE CAN!

I love science, but science is subjective; it isn't everything.

With all due respect to science and smart guys like RJS; I have NOT (in my lifetime) seen a leader who has the intelligence and the power to move, and inspire the people of our great nation to come together and do great things -- until now.

Obama gets my vote.

-41-year-old, Texas redneck Republican and paraplegic.

I don???t know if anyone has seen this diary???but it is an excellent analysis of the 2 candidates. It puts their congressional records side by side and shows why Obama is the candidate of the future. Please check this out for UNBIASED, OBJECTIVE research on the candidates.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/20/201332/807/36/4 58633

What's the matter Samuelson? Is the black man getting to close to--gulp--actually winning? Uppity ******

Comment: Comment: Comment: Comment: Comment: Judge Him by His Laws
COMMENT
washingtonpost.com
By Charles Peters
People who complain that Barack Obama lacks experience must be unaware of his legislative achievements. One reason these accomplishments are unfamiliar is that the media have not devoted enough attention to Obama's bills and the effort required to pass them, ignoring impressive, hard evidence of his character and ability.
Since most of Obama's legislation was enacted in Illinois, most of the evidence is found there -- and it has been largely ignored by the media in a kind of Washington snobbery that assumes state legislatures are not to be taken seriously. (Another factor is reporters' fascination with the horse race at the expense of substance that they assume is boring, a fascination that despite being ridiculed for years continues to dominate political journalism.)

i dont remeber the movie but the quote is: "you want the truth, the truth is you cant handle the TRUTH" If one takes your arguement at face value one has to assume that people will respond to a totally honest politician and not 'blame the messanger'. Under that proposal no problem would ever get solved.

Comment: Comment: Comment: Comment: Comment: Judge Him by His Laws
COMMENT
washingtonpost.com
By Charles Peters
People who complain that Barack Obama lacks experience must be unaware of his legislative achievements. One reason these accomplishments are unfamiliar is that the media have not devoted enough attention to Obama's bills and the effort required to pass them, ignoring impressive, hard evidence of his character and ability.
Since most of Obama's legislation was enacted in Illinois, most of the evidence is found there -- and it has been largely ignored by the media in a kind of Washington snobbery that assumes state legislatures are not to be taken seriously. (Another factor is reporters' fascination with the horse race at the expense of substance that they assume is boring, a fascination that despite being ridiculed for years continues to dominate political journalism.)

As always, a total disconnedt. That's why the media has such a bad rep. You just parrot what one affected person has to say without any credible followup. The American people know all to well the "experience" that both Hilliary and McCain have--politics as usual. Her husband had eight years and Bushes had 12 to make things right and serve as cecent leaders for the American people and the world. Where are we now. This is the moment people have waited for though thought impossible--a true American leader who will base his policies on the American dream. Have you all become too jaded, too sinical, too diselusioned by business as usual to believe. At this point, we have nothing to lose except more years of the war machine with McCain or more divisiness with Clinton. I hope the American people understand the media's role in undermining anything that allows people to think for themselves. Why don't you let the candidates say what the have to say and let the people determine for whom they will vote.

Comment: Comment:
Hillary Clinton Goofs Again
A Commentary by Dick Morris

Who was it that defined neurosis as repeating the same mistake again and again, and expecting a better outcome each time? That???s really what the Clinton campaign is doing in its post-Chesapeake primary strategy. Now Hillary defines Obama as the candidate who makes speeches, while she is the one who provides ???answers??? and ???solutions.???

Why is Hillary embracing this new line? It???s not that she has any great record of solutions or answers of which to boast, but rather that she wants to highlight Obama???s lack of a legislative record. Once again, she and her campaign geniuses are making the same mistake they made when they decided to use the experience as their defining difference with Obama. It???s not that she had much, but they sensed an opportunity to highlight that he had even less.
Of course experience not only didn???t work. It backfired massively. By co-opting the experience tag, Hillary bought into the status quo and left Obama to be the agent of change. A candidacy that could have excited tens of millions of women, the first serious prospect of a female president, became merely a boring part of the status quo, shorn of its novelty.

Hillary???s claim to be the solution-person won???t work either for the same simple reason: She hasn???t passed any...she hasn???t walked the walk so now she cannot talk the talk.

As a first lady, Hillary???s sole important legislative involvement came during the first two years of her husband???s presidency when she sought to pass her ill-conceived health care reform, an effort that failed so miserably that it cost her party control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Between 1995 to 1997, she was largely absent from the White House, traveling the world, promoting her best selling book and helping to raise funds. She never attended strategy meetings and her only intervention in the singular legislative achievements of Bill???s administration ??? welfare reform and the balanced budget deal ??? was privately to urge a veto of the former and to oppose the latter because it provided for a cut in the capital gains tax. Hillary returned to the White House in 1998 to oversee the defense to the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment attempt, but the Clinton administration essentially folded its legislative efforts during those years and hung on for dear life. No portfolio of accomplishments there...

Her only actual legislation included one bill to increase nurse recruitment, another to aid respite time for Alzheimers' care givers and another to expand veteran's health benefits, a paltry output for six years of service.

In her second term, she has spent full-time campaigning for president and has the worst attendance record of the three senators now still in the presidential race.

Wow. Where's the reporting to back up these claims? The Washington Post gave Obama's economic stimulus package an A- (compared to Hillary Clinton's C). As for innovation and substance, just look at his record. In addition to passage of the biggest ethics reform bill since Watergate, his anti-WMD bill with Lugar, his federal spending transparency bill that allows citizens to monitor government contracts, and his numerous well-publicized efforts advancing Veterans health, below are only a handful of the scores of innovative pieces of legislation Sen. Obama has proposed:

(Want more? Check out his record in Illinois where he got passed the toughest campaign finance reform in the state???s history, an affordable health care plan, an expansion of early childhood education, and created the Earned Income Tax Credit program that gave over $100 million in tax cuts for working families throughout Illinois.)

9. S.114 : A bill to authorize resources for a grant program for local educational agencies to create innovation districts.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 1/4/2007) Cosponsors (None)
Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Latest Major Action: 1/4/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.

17. S.692 : A bill to amend title 38, United States Code, to establish a Hospital Quality Report Card Initiative to report on health care quality in Veterans Affairs hospitals.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 2/27/2007) Cosponsors (1)
Committees: Senate Veterans' Affairs
Latest Major Action: 2/27/2007 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

25. S.976 : A bill to secure the promise of personalized medicine for all Americans by expanding and accelerating genomics research and initiatives to improve the accuracy of disease diagnosis, increase the safety of drugs, and identify novel treatments.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 3/23/2007) Cosponsors (1)
Committees: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

26. S.1067 : A bill to require Federal agencies to support health impact assessments and take other actions to improve health and the environmental quality of communities, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 3/29/2007) Cosponsors (3)

NOTE! INTRODUCED IN APRIL 2007! 31. S.1222 : A bill to stop mortgage transactions which operate to promote fraud, risk, abuse, and under-development, and for other purposes.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 4/25/2007) Cosponsors (1)


35. S.1389 : A bill to authorize the National Science Foundation to establish a Climate Change Education Program.
Sponsor: Sen Obama, Barack [IL] (introduced 5/14/2007) Cosponsors (3)