Nins: Why are you peddling BS trotted out by a pack of leftwinged rags? General James Simmons,not only did not cancel such a display,but produced it before reporters of several news services including CNN,NBC,Agence France Presse,REUTERS,the AP,ABC,and others on Nov.17,2007. Indeed,why would Iranian Supreme Council Member Ayatollah Khamenei agree that such arms were indeed,flowing to Iraq in his Nov.18,2007 meeting with Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq? You are presenting only half-truths with regards to Irans nuclear program. The IAEA not only acknowlages that Iran is making enriched uranium,but as late as last month,acknowlaged that Iran was ''only two years away from a nuclear weapon.Perhaps less.''[Remarks,Muhammed El-Baradei June 20,2008,AL-ARABIYA]. The IAEA recognizes that Iran now has plutonium,along with its acknowlagement that its large numbers of centerfuges ''could produce enough material for one bomb in six months to one year'',hence El-Baradeis newest worries. At this moment,Iran refuses to allow full inspections by the IAEA.
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The Incremental Revolutionary
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Pam Sutherland, president of Illinois Planned Parenthood, tells NEWSWEEK that the ploy was her idea: "Senator Obama was always a no vote in committee, but we had other Democrats, and a couple of Republicans, who were tired of having mailers sent out against them." Sutherland says Obama could have voted no without suffering any negative fallout, since he came from a very liberal Chicago district. But, she says, his participation in the deal helped give cover to his colleagues.
The abortion maneuver is emblematic of a style of politics that shows up throughout Obama's career, both in Illinois and in Washington. Though in speeches he sounds like an idealistic revolutionary out to take back the capital, Obama's record suggests he is actually more of an incrementalist. On the stump, he speaks in the grandest terms, but in practice he inches his way toward a goal. At times he has settled for a piece of what he set out to achieve in hopes of getting a little bit more the next time around. If Obama is selling any revolutionary idea, it's a celebration of compromise.
That's a rare concept in Washington, where getting nothing done is seen as a victory, and giving up an inch to the other side a defeat. "Since the founding, the American political tradition has been reformist, not revolutionary," Obama told Harper's magazine in 2006. "What that means is that for a political leader to get things done, he or she ideally should be ahead of the curve, but not too far ahead. I want to push the envelope but make sure I have enough folks with me that I'm not rendered politically impotent."
No one ever won a presidential campaign with the slogan "Incremental Change for Working Americans," and Obama's inclusive, take-what-you-can-get style has had mixed results. In Illinois, Obama sponsored an expansion of a program called KidCare, which extended health coverage to children up to 200 percent above the poverty level (up from 185 percent). In all, it extended benefits to an additional 150,000 people in the state. But his efforts to push a much more ambitious universal-health-care proposal stalled when his colleagues demanded to know how to pay for it. Obama realized the plan was going nowhere, and settled for a compromise: a commission to study the issue. "Anyone can introduce a bill," says Dale Righter, a Republican who faced Obama on the issue. "Anyone elected to the General Assembly can turn on their microphone and make a speech."
In Springfield, Obama, who got his political start in the tough political wars on Chicago's South Side, knew the value of making friends fast. He curried favor with the chamber's battle-scarred veterans, including Senate President Emil Jones, an old-school Chicago pol. When he first arrived, Obama chose the worst seat in the chamber, way in the back next to the men's room. Anyone who needed to relieve himself had to get by Obama first.
Obama befriended Democrats and Republicans, including law-and-order conservatives—friendships that proved useful as he helped reform the state's death-penalty policies. After legal activists uncovered several wrongful convictions of death-row inmates, there was no doubt the system needed to be fixed. The then Gov. George Ryan commuted the sentence of every Illinois death-row inmate. Jones, the state Senate president, picked Obama to broker a deal between feuding Democrats and Republicans. Obama pushed a plan that would require police to videotape their interrogations and confessions incapital cases.
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