This election cannot be based on personal likeability. It matters not whether Barack Obama is a better speaker than Hillary Clinton or visa versa. Now is not the time or place for a popularity contest - the stakes are too high.
This country is in the midst of the biggest downhill plunge of the 50 years and we need a President with a team of advisors ready to move into the White House with the most experience in every area of policy making the minute Bush leaves.
As personable as he is, and despite his good intentions, the fact remains; Barack Obama does not have the qualifications or experience for the job he is seeking.
Most importantly, his foreign policy experience is totally lacking, and for obvious reasons, this factor alone disqualifies him for the presidency at this time.
John McCain is in lockstep with Bush on Iraq, even if it means staying there for 100 years. The fact that Barack is doing as well as he is has recently led to a nagging suspicion that the Republicans are somehow aiding his campaign behind the scenes, totally unbeknownst to Mr Obama, because they believe John McCain would have a better shot at beating him than Hillary.
The country is in a do or die position in both Iraq and Afghanistan and we're running out of money and second chances. Our soldiers have stuck in the senseless war in Iraq for five years, longer than either of the world wars.
A new book entitled, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," by Nobel laureate and former chief World Bank economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and co-author Linda Bilmes, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, reveals the outrageous cost of the Iraq war.
Of course, in response to the book, the White House sent out a spokesman with the usual worn out mantra about 9/11 stating:
"People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can't even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11."
In a broadcast interview with Democracy Now on February 28, 2008, the authors said the Bush administration has repeatedly low-balled the cost of the war in Iraq and a second set of records were kept hidden from the American public.
According to Ms Bilmes, "right now we spend $12 billion a month in Iraq alone, $16 billion if you include Afghanistan."
"Which doesn't include the cost down the line," she said, "if you include just the cost that we've already incurred for veterans and replenishing equipment and so forth, it's double that."
"It's $25 billion a month," she explained.
During the interview, Ms Bilmes described what she called "really outrageous situations" when trying to get information about the war. Even today, she said, "if you go to the official DOD website, what you will find is a number around 30,000 wounded, but that is only the wounded in combat."
She explained that if the non-combat wounded in Iraq are counted, for example, soldiers who are injured when they're driving vehicles at night, because it's unsafe to drive during the day; or soldiers wounded when they are being transported from one place and another, who never would have been there otherwise, the number of wounded is more than double the number listed on the DOD website.
"We had to use the Freedom of Information Act to get access to that number," she said.
You do not impress me as some one who knows what they are talking about. Do you mean to say that Laura Bush also has experience to run the country? Since when does being the first lady have anything to do with experience? Obama has more years of direct experience than Hillary. I can only count a little more than six years of elected official experience in Clinton. Obama's is much more extensive.
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michal54 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 3:55:01 PM
Lower grades and not being president of law review - like her opponent was.
Not passing the bar like her opponent did.
Riding on your husband's record and his political machine, or building your own, like her opponent did.
Claiming her husband’s years in office to appear to have more "experience" than your opponent who actually has more years as an elected official than you.
Lacking the character to congratulate your opponent when he wins
Lying about NAFTA to dodge responsibility for the fact that you championed it and turning it around to create the false impression that your opponent supports NAFTA
Disloyally identifying with the opposing party’s candidate as having "a lifetime of experience," in common with you and mis-characterizing the 20 years of experience of your fellow Democrat as "a speech."
Casting yourself as the feminine victim: they call on me first, the press is coddling my opponent, placing people in the audience to ask if you prefer diamonds or pearls, surrounding yourself with sympathetic women who want to know "how you do it," and then getting "victimized" by men who tell you to "iron their shirts," just in time for the New Hampshire primary . . . Characterizing your opponent as getting a free pass from the press when the press reported everything they even guessed about him, and the wrongs of everyone who came into contact with him, multiple times. while never mentioning the skeletons in your closet like: travel gate; renting out the Lincoln bedroom; removing papers from Vince Edwards’ residence after his suicide; non-disclosed tax returns; undisclosed donors to Bill’s foundation; undisclosed donors to Bill’s presidential library, besides Saudi royal family $10 million donation; undisclosed earmarks; cattle futures scandal; Whitewater . . .
Not encouraging your supporters - like your opponent did, when you loose. Instead running out of town, leaving your supporters to fend for themselves when you loose, but showing up to bask in glory when you win. Kind of like George Bush making his appearance on a naval ship to announce the victory, that never was . . .
Not taking responsibility for your actions - "I voted for it but I hoped it wouldn't pass . . ." Give me credit for my husband’s administration, but not the things that go wrong, like NAFTA.
If you want a woman in the White House who perpetuates every stereotype about women who want to run with the big dogs, but who don’t want to take the responsibility that goes with that status, then Hillary's the one.
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Hargrove (7 articles, 2 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 at 1:42:15 PM
'Experience' is one of those well-worn campaign terms of art we are saturated with at election time. It is apparent to me that one can usually see in someone's background what they wish to see in order to bolster their 'gut feeling' about a stranger courting them for their vote, but since we have only a fractional sliver of the experience on the record for these candidates--minus the backroom deals and secret agreements made with power-brokers--we ought not to kid ourselves that we can assess them by the record alone. Especially if they have been around for awhile, as Hillary has. Thats where the gut comes in.
There is another consideration here, one that is arguably just as important, if not vastly more so.
Life provides plenty of experience to enter any field. If it gives you the kind of experience Dubya's life provided--priviliged, elitist, ultra-wealthified underachievement, beset with emotional imbalances and a side order of heavy substance abuse--those are good predictors for the kind of results to expect. The background check is a staple of investigative techniques, whether for crime-solving, or prospective employment. It is useful to talk to a cross-section of people who have had dealings with the person in question. There are enough accounts of Hillary's demeanor and psychological state by those who have worked with her over her 'career" to paint a convincing picture of her off-camera persona. She is 'one of the boys' when it comes to power, so I'm pretty weary of hearing the gender card played by her supporters, both to support her and to cry "foul" when it suits them. She is ravenous for power, and to prove herself on the political playing field, at the expense of any consistent moral standard. And she and her husband are both--very obviously--up for sale.
In light of that, the question of her experience is rendered less relevant than her fitness to lead this country. Sure she's smart. As in savvy. What is her emotional intelligence, and her ethics-quotient? Here's a clue: she's married to Bill Clinton. I do not mean to be glib, nor to imply guilt-by-association. Nonetheless, her top advisor--her Karl Rove if you will-is quite obviously morally bankrupt, and they do have a 'successful' marriage by political standards. I would like to offer the suggestion that is so, and they have stayed together for a lifetime is that they are an example of the power of compatibility, on the level that matters most to both of them.
Hows that for arm-chair psychologizing?
Electing a national leader is a crapshoot, lets face it. We vote for images, not people. The truth is, we don't know what we'll get until we elect them, and if you're satisfied with what Bill and Hillary did in their near-decade-long song and dance routine, go for it. I say we deserve a chance for something better, and Obama best represents that chance. Does he have skeletons, and negatives in his horoscope? Undoubtedly. But this is one case where I am opting for the devil-less-known.
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Randje Mitchell (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 48 comments)
on Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 8:18:51 PM
