Lobotero’s Info Ink

Barely one month after sealing his victory in the primaries and with four months to go before the general election, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has embarked on a campaign swing that has the declared aim of proving his patriotism.

Obama kicked off his patriotism tour—set to run through the July 4th holiday—with a speech entitled “The America We Love,” delivered in Independence, Missouri. The site was chosen not merely for the town’s name, but to establish Obama’s connection with its most famous son—Harry Truman, the Democratic president who ordered atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Obama’s speech, ostensibly a reflection upon patriotism and “American values” in the run-up to July 4th, was a thoroughly reactionary address, in which words were carefully chosen to identify with themes generally associated with the Republican right and, at key points, to deliver a kick in the teeth to sections of left-liberal Democrats who have deluded themselves and sought to generate illusions in others about the real political character of his campaign.

Obama began his speech with a ritualistic reference to the “men of Lexington and Concord … our first patriots,” without a word to acknowledge that the democratic ideals embodied in the American Revolution and the guarantees of democratic rights written into the US Constitution have been subjected to a wholesale repudiation in practice by the current Republican administration in Washington.

Of course, the Democrats and Obama himself are fully complicit in this process. “How do we keep ourselves safe and secure while preserving our liberties?” the Democratic candidate asked rhetorically at one point in the speech. Obama offered no answer, but just the week before he announced his support for a bill legalizing the Bush administration’s domestic spying program, while offering blanket immunity to telecommunications companies that collaborated in the massive illegal warrantless wiretapping operation.

To me it is a little silly for anyone to have to prove their patriotism to anyone.  I guess this makes good copy for the 24 hour news stations.  It is either this or some car chase in Peoria.

Susan Estrich wrote an interesting article on patriotism:

Sen. John McCain’s trip to Colombia and Mexico this week made one thing clear: The shape of the United States’ relationship with Latin America will hinge on the outcome of the 2008 election.

The Republican presidential candidate and his Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama, have outlined sharply contrasting visions of how they would conduct relations in the hemisphere. McCain is committed to putting a new emphasis on the region but would pursue many of the policies followed by President Bush in Latin America, with a heavy emphasis on counternarcotics efforts, free trade and a push to curb illegal immigration. Obama has sketched a broad approach that relies more on diplomatic efforts and expression of soft power, through more foreign assistance, an infusion of Peace Corps volunteers and a willingness to meet with hard-line leftist leaders.

The two men’s backgrounds have helped shape their divergent perspectives. McCain has visited Latin America dozens of times and took part in the bitter U.S. policy fights over the region in the 1980s, while Obama has yet to visit a single country there. But both senators are arguing that the United States needs to pursue closer ties with Central and South America to address some of America’s most pressing problems, including illegal immigration, drug trafficking and terrorism.

For decades, U.S. leaders used Latin America as a key battleground in the war against communism, supporting some regimes while seeking to undermine others based on their ideological tilt. It was only in the 1990s that American politicians began to adopt a less explicitly interventionist approach, shifting to a more collaborative relationship based more on economic than political interests.

President Clinton’s two significant accomplishments involving Latin America during his tenure were pushing the North American Free Trade Agreement through Congress and helping to establish the Summit of the Americas. While President Bush pledged to emphasize relations with the region, the bulk of his foreign policy has focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCain has made a point of stressing his intimate knowledge of the region during his three-day tour, lavishing praise on Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and Mexican President Felipe Calderón for their efforts to combat drug trafficking and terrorism. In a news conference Thursday at the command center for the Mexican federal judicial police, McCain lauded Uribe for launching a successful raid this week to free 15 hostages held by Marxist rebels, and welcomed a recent anti-narcotics agreement between the United States and Mexico as perhaps “the most important agreement” the two nations have signed.

Some Democratic lawmakers have privately expressed concerns that McCain’s trip may give him an upper hand on Latin American issues, an advantage that seemed to get a boost from McCain’s presence in Colombia on the same day that the 15 hostages were rescued from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. Plans are being made to try to persuade Obama to visit the northern city of Monterrey, one of Mexico’s industrial capitals.

I understand the necessity for good PR, but going South of the border does nothing in the election, other than providing someone with a photo-op.  I would suggest that they concentrate on becoming president and then worry about who does what south of the border.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain wants the U.S. military to be much larger than current expansion plans envision, an adviser to the Arizona senator said this week.

The Bush administration has begun expanding the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to create a combined strength of around 750,000 active duty troops — a process backed by McCain’s Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

But McCain believes an Army and Marine Corps with a combined strength of up to 900,000 troops is necessary, said Randy Scheunemann, an adviser to the candidate on foreign policy and national security.

The U.S. Army and Marines have been severely strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many troops have served multiple tours in the war zones and currently spend only 12 months at home before they deploy again for another year.

As a member of the U.S. Senate’s armed services committee, McCain has built a reputation for scrutinizing the costs of big weapons programs and he has pledged to pursue that approach in the White House if he wins November’s election.

Obama and McCain have a very similar vision for the service to the country.  So if that is one of your guidelines for picking a candidate, then flip coin.

This is why I had reserved my support for any candidate before now….they say and do anything to be elected.  Obama has been called the most left person in the senate, but to be elected he is moving to the center….will it work…yes, he will most likely be elected president this Fall.

- Sen. Barack Obama raised the possibility of slowing a promised gradual, 16-month withdrawal from Iraq if he is elected president, saying that Thursday he will consult with military commanders on an upcoming trip to the region and “continue to refine” his proposals.

“My 16-month timeline, if you examine everything I’ve said, was always premised on making sure our troops were safe,” Obama told reporters as his campaign plane landed in North Dakota, a state no Democratic presidential candidate has carried since 1964. “And my guiding approach continues to be that we’ve got to make sure that our troops are safe, and that Iraq is stable. And I’m going to continue to gather information to find out whether those conditions still hold.”

In a second, hastily convened news conference, Obama insisted that his policies have not changed, and that he has “not equivocated” or is not “searching for maneuvering room” on Iraq. Consultations with commanders in the coming weeks will be focused more on the size of U.S. forces needed to train and equip Iraqi military and police units, as well as maintaining a “counterterrorism strike force” to prevent al-Qaeda from making a comeback, he said.

Do not know if anyone has noticed his slow but steady move to the center.  So please people, STOP calling him a progressive…..he is proving that he is NO progressive, but rather a typical politician.

This will be the last time that this will reported on in Info Ink, in the last couple of days I have been blasted for my piece on the Clark McCain experience piece, so I decidied to comment one more time.

Stopit! Stop it! Before we go forth please take a moment to flush the emotional BS down the toilet.

I do not think that Wes Clark or myself are impuning McCain’s service to this country–to do so would be political, societal and cultural suicide. Because there is no definitive definition to the word patriotism or national hero, it is purely subjective. To use an obscure concept to say that is experience to be president is absurd. Even McCain has admitted this in past conversations.

As I have said before, a uniform does not make one a patriot, but rather a soldier. The National Hero label is a label and nothing more. To call someone a hero just because they served in the military is to belittle those who have actually done heroic acts.

Few people who have been president have actually had the experie3ncxe to hold the title of president. To get emotional because someone questions another’s experience claim is just dumb and usually comes from those who have no answer to the “real” question of experience.

Try to move past the BS and on to the issues that are most important to the American people. You know those silly issues like the economy, health care, education, war, etc–if we allow the candidates to keep circumventing the issues, then we will have 4 more years of the same BS that we live with today.

America! Get over it! Move on!

Democrat Barack Obama said yesterday that if elected president he would set aside more than $500 million a year in federal funds for religious organizations to help the disadvantaged, sharply expanding a Bush administration program that has strong support from evangelical Christians.

Political analysts said Obama’s proposal appeared to be part of an attempt to shift to the center and recruit moderate, evangelical Christians and mainstream Catholics, two voting blocs that consistently supported Bush and have embraced Republican candidates.

Groups cannot use the money to proselytize those in need, he said, and they cannot refuse to hire someone of a different religion. Federal dollars granted directly to churches, temples, and mosques can only be used on secular programs, Obama said, adding that close monitoring will “ensure that taxpayer dollars only go to those programs that actually work.” The People for the American Way, a liberal public-interest group, issued a statement yesterday applauding Obama for those safeguards, but questioning why he would allow direct government payments to houses of worship, something that “is neither necessary nor appropriate.”

Obama is just becoming the candidate I was waiting him to become.  In the past I have said that I was not yet an Obama supporter and this is why I wait.  Democratic candidates start getting votes because they are left leaning, then as the general approaches they almost always move to the center.  This is just a pandering piece to try and wrangle the religious from the Repubs.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton ended their mutual silent treatment Monday, with the Democratic presidential candidate reaching out and asking his former Democratic nemesis to help him win the White House.

In their first conversation since the end of the heated primary, former President Clinton agreed to campaign for the candidate he portrayed as inexperienced for a presidential run. Obama had said Bill Clinton’s harsh criticisms led him to wonder which Clinton he was running against sometimes.

The 20-minute conversation was the latest step in bringing together the two warring camps. While Hillary Rodham Clinton has been publicly behind Obama, hard feelings remained between the former Democratic president and the candidate hoping to become the next one.

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama asked Clinton to campaign with him and on his own.

Obama “has always believed that Bill Clinton is one of this nation’s great leaders and most brilliant minds, and looks forward to seeing him on the campaign trail and receiving his counsel in the months to come,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

Clinton spokesman Matt McKenna said the former president renewed his offer - expressed in a one-sentence statement last week - to do whatever he can to ensure Obama wins the presidency.

“President Clinton continues to be impressed by Senator Obama and the campaign he has run, and looks forward to campaigning for and with him in the months to come,” McKenna said. “The president believes that Senator Obama has been a great inspiration for millions of people around the country and he knows that he will bring the change America needs as our next president.”

Is this a move to assist a politician or a move to assist the American people to a better life?  As an observer of this political system for many years, I personally think it is a move to try and salvage the legacy of a once popular president.

Lieberman is bumping his gums, making misleading statements, I guess trying to feather his bid for the VP spot.  Then BUsh gets out there and thanx all concerned with the GI Bill including McCain, who by the way was opposed to it.  And then there was Wes Clark…..need I say more?

First let me ask, McCain how he likes the Swift Boat Technique?  If everyone is truly sick of the personal attack stuff, then be the bigger man and stop it!  Personally, I think that the points that Clark made are valid points.  Patriotism is a subjective thing and to try and define it for others is just plain arrogant.  The experience thing, unless the candidate was a VP then none of them have had the executive experience to be president.  Wearing a military uniform is not experience, it is however the sign of a military person serving his country.

The point being that NONE of the candidates are telling the truth and the media is just milking the stories for all they are worth.  Everyone seems so afraid to stating the obvious.  That being on welfare or being a POW is NOT a thing of experience to run this country.  Or that being a pilot or a community activist is not presidential experience.

Please people!  If you step in cow crap, call it what it is—CRAP!

Obama’s transformation from opponent to champion of welfare reform is the latest in a series of moves to the center. Since capturing the Democratic nomination, Obama has altered his stances on Social Security taxes, meeting with rogue leaders without preconditions, and the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.’s, sweeping gun ban.

The shift in Obama’s rhetoric on welfare reform has proceeded in stages. When Clinton was poised to sign welfare reform while running for re-election in 1996, Obama called it “disturbing.” A decade later, as an underdog running for president against Clinton’s wife, he spent 2007 avoiding the subject. By the time Obama emerged as the Democratic frontrunner in the spring of 2008, he began leaving the impression that he was for it all along.

When implementation of welfare reform came before the Illinois state senate in 1997, Obama cited a lack of job training, insufficient oversight, and provisions blocking legal immigrants from receiving benefits as his reasons for opposing a federal welfare overhaul imposing work requirements and time limits.

While campaigning for president in 2007, Obama refused on two occasions to say if he would have signed the same welfare-reform bill approved by the husband of his top rival.

By glossing over his early opposition to welfare reform, Obama is stepping closer to the political mainstream. But by undergoing this transformation only once it became politically convenient, Obama’s critics will charge that he puts calculation ahead of conviction.