Obama

Obama Opposes California’s Gay Marriage Ban

Posted by Jeff from Crooks and Liars

Pretty consistent with his previous comments.

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Boys of Summer by Daniel Flynn, City Journal

Posted by HansGruen

Backing a major-party candidate for president would have been anathema to Michael Klonsky 40 summers ago, when the organization he led, Students for a Democratic Society, urged young people to spurn elections. "By '68, our line was 'Vote in the Streets,'" Klonsky told me last spring. "We thought we had to fight with Eugene McCarthy and those people." In August 1968, protesters clashed with police outside the Democratic Party's national convention in Chicago-but far from being political innocents who took to the streets to protest Vietnam War hawks' capture of the Democratic presidential nomination, many of them never supported antiwar candidates McCarthy and Robert Kennedy. ...

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LIARS ROUND-UP By Ralph Peters- New York Post

Posted by HansGruen from Nypost

THE facts about your security are being torn to shreds by activist liars. And they think that you're too stupid to know the difference.Let's lay out the worst current examples of media make-believe and election-year truth-trashing:

Whopper No. 1: America is less safe today than it was on Sept. 10, 2001. Oh, really? Where's the evidence? The Clinton years saw New York City attacked and Americans slaughtered by terrorists around the globe. Nothing was done to protect us.

And the true end of the Clinton era came on 9/11. ...

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Obama Undercuts His Brand

Posted by Jeff from Feeds.huffingtonpost

Sen. Barack Obama is risking his brand as a political reformer, according to reports today in the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. In recent weeks, he has moderated or changed positions on a number of politically-charged issues, leading to criticism from demoralized Democratic activists and charges of "flip-flopping" from conservatives.

The Times reports:

In recent weeks, he toughened his stance on Iran and backed an expansion of the government's wiretapping powers. On Wednesday, he said states should be allowed to execute child rapists. When the Supreme Court the next day struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, he did not complain...

..."I've been struck by the speed and decisiveness of his move to the center," said Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute...

...And Obama endorsed a compromise wiretapping bill despite stiff opposition from liberal activists. MoveOn.org, the liberal online activist group, asked its members to flood Obama's campaign office with phone calls and e-mails urging him to support a filibuster of the bill.

The changes carry some risk that Obama will diminish the image he has sought to build as a new type of leader who will change how Washington conducts business. McCain and other Republicans have used his recent policy statements to argue that Obama is a traditional politician, unwilling to take clear stands on tough issues and abandoning his principles when he finds it advantageous.

The Post reports that those who should be his strongest supporters are taking this as a wake-up call:

The switch is not without precedent. On a variety of issues, including gun control and campaign finance regulation, the presumptive Democratic nominee has shown himself willing to settle for incremental changes in the face of political reality rather than to hold out for the sweeping and uncompromising positions he initially stakes out.

But even some who should be his core constituents -- in the Democratic Party's progressive wing and the liberal blogosphere -- have taken his recent maneuvers as a wake-up call. They are warning the senator that in his quest to reach voters in the middle of the political spectrum, he risks depressing the enthusiasm of the voters who clinched the nomination for him.

"American voters tend to reward politicians who take clear stands," said David Sirota, a former Democratic aide on Capitol Hill and author of the new populist-themed book "The Uprising." "When Obama takes these mushy positions, it could speak to a character issue. Voters that don't pay a lot of attention look at one thing: 'Does the guy believe in something?' They may be saying the guy is afraid of his own shadow."

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Obama worker, Bush pastor linked to Dobson-bashing

Posted by 6packofapathy from Wnd

A campaign worker for Barack Obama and the Texas Methodist pastor who advises President Bush have been linked to a website that bashes prominent Christian leader and Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.

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Obama Goes Soft on Free Trade | Election 2008 | AlterNet

Posted by Damianmann from Alternet

Obama campaigned against NAFTA during the primaries. Now he's backpedaling and reassuring Wall Street about that same policy.

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Clinton camp looking for Obama money

Posted by Jeff from Politico

Obama has stepped up pressure on donors to help Clinton retire debt, but her aides want more action.

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