BarackObamacans: 2008-11-02

Saturday, November 8, 2008

THIS MAN HATES BARACK OBAMA AND CALLS HIS MOTHER TRASH

Sarah Palin blamed by the US Secret Service over death threats against Barack Obama

Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.

By Tim Shipman in Washington Last Updated: 4:04PM GMT 08 Nov 2008

Palin's tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists Photo: Reuters
The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling "terrorist" and "kill him" until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin's attacks.
Michelle Obama, the future First Lady, was so upset that she turned to her friend and campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett and said: "Why would they try to make people hate us?"
The revelations, contained in a Newsweek history of the campaign, are likely to further damage Mrs Palin's credentials as a future presidential candidate. She is already a frontrunner, with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, to take on Mr Obama in four years time.
Details of the spike in threats to Mr Obama come as a report last week by security and intelligence analysts Stratfor, warned that he is a high risk target for racist gunmen. It concluded: "Two plots to assassinate Obama were broken up during the campaign season, and several more remain under investigation. We would expect federal authorities to uncover many more plots to attack the president that have been hatched by white supremacist ideologues."
Irate John McCain aides, who blame Mrs Palin for losing the election, claim Mrs Palin took it upon herself to question Mr Obama's patriotism, before the line of attack had been cleared by Mr McCain.
That claim is part of a campaign of targeted leaks designed to torpedo her ambitions, with claims that she did not know that Africawas a continent rather than a country.
The advisers have branded her a "diva" and a "whack job" and claimed that she did not know which other countries are in the North American Free Trade Area, (Canada and Mexico). They say she spent more than $150,000 on designer clothes, including $40,000 on her husband Todd and that she refused to prepare for the disastrous series of interviews with CBS's Katie Couric.
In a bid to salvage her reputation Mrs Palin came out firing in an interview with CNN, dismissing the anonymous leakers in unpresidential language as "jerks" who had taken "questions or comments I made in debate prep out of context."
She said: "I consider it cowardly. It's not true. That's cruel, it's mean-spirited, it's immature, it's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news that's not fair and not right."
She was not asked about her incendiary rhetoric against Mr Obama. But she did deny the spending spree claims, saying the clothes in question had been returned to the Republican National Committee. "Those are the RNC's clothes, they're not my clothes. I asked for anything more than maybe a diet Dr Pepper once in a while. These are false allegations."
Speaking as she returned to her native Alaska, Mrs Palin claimed to be baffled by what she claims was sexism on the national stage. "Here in Alaska that double standard isn't applied because these guys know that Alaskan women are pretty tough, on a par with the men in terms of being outdoors, working hard," she said.
"They're commercial fishermen, they're pilots, they're working up on the North slopein the oil fields. You see equality in Alaska. I think that was a bit of as surprise on the national level."

Barack Obama: the road to the White House

Jonathan Freedland narrates a half-hour documentary tracing Barack Obama's remarkable journey to the White House, from his childhood in Hawaii, through his education in Indonesia and at Harvard. Accompanied by contemporary and archive pictures, plus reports from Guardian correspondents around the world. Audio by Francesca Panetta. Slideshow by Mee-Lai Stone

check it out here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2008/nov/05/obama-road-to-white-house1

Sept. 24, 2008 The Day John McCain lost the election

Sept. 24, 2008
The day John McCain lost the election.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, at 10:05 PM ET

For Bill Clinton in 1992, it was the economy, stupid. For John McCain in 2008, it was the stupid economy. Exit polls showed that 62 percent of the electorate said the economy was the most important issue.

But when, precisely, did John McCain lose the narrative on the economy? Was it last July, when economic adviser Phil Gramm, discussing the "mental recession," noted that "we've sort of become a nation of whiners"? Perhaps it was back in December 2007, when McCain said, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should." Or was McCain's economic goose cooked long before the campaigns started? Ray Fair, the Yale professor who plugs macroeconomic data into an election-predicting model, said that "since November 2006, the model has consistently been predicting that the Democratic candidate would get about 52 percent of the two-party vote."

McCain managed to give Obama a run for the money through mid-September. The polls began to turn (decisively, it turns out) against him when the global financial system suffered a run on the money. And with the acuity bestowed by six weeks of hindsight, I think it's possible to pinpoint three dates—Sept. 15, Sept. 24, and Oct. 15—that mark crucial turning points in the campaign.

On Sept. 15, Lehman Bros., having failed to convince the government it was worthy of a bailout, filed for bankruptcy. The same day, McCain proclaimed: "I think, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong." A twin killer. Lehman's failure triggered a ferocious and unpredictable series of events—the freezing of money-market funds, a global credit seizure—that made it clear that 1) the fundamentals of our economy were anything but strong and 2) volatility was here to stay. McCain's ill-timed line, a longtime presidential staple, showed he had no intuitive feel for how to talk about the economy at large or about the crisis at hand.

Sept. 24, as talks about a Washington bailout intensified, McCain announced he would suspend his campaign and fly to Washington. The theory: McCain would put country first, force Obama off the campaign trail, forge a bipartisan compromise, and alter the dynamics of the race. But McCain didn't have a game plan to triangulate effectively between the Republican gentry (the Bush administration, Wall Street, corporate America), who ardently demanded a bailout, and the pitchfork-toting peasants (House Republicans), who opposed it. He ended up leaving town and resuming campaigning without an agreement in place.

While McCain seemed detached, Obama caucused with financial graybeards and kept his campaign plane on the tarmac to get updates from his new speed-dialing buddy, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Self-serving? You betcha. But doggone successful. And the passage of the bailout bill, which McCain grudgingly supported, neutered the increasingly ideological economic warfare McCain waged in the closing weeks. At a time when the Bush administration was nationalizing big portions of the (grateful) financial services sector, charges that Obama was a socialist, the redistributor-in-chief, the second coming of Eugene V. Debs, failed to gain traction.

The third fatal date? Oct. 15, when the third debate took place. Throughout the fall, Obama had rounded up financial icons such as former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker and Warren Buffett to serve as surrogates. They could reassure Wall Street and Main Street that Obama could steer the nation through treacherous financial waters. Rather than enlist a respected businessperson such as Mitt Romney or former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as his chief economic surrogate, McCain turned to an unlicensed plumber from Ohio. McCain mentioned "Joe the Plumber" seven times in the Oct. 15 debate. In the ensuing weeks, McCain routinely trotted out Samuel J. Wurzelbacher's economic folk wisdom as gospel.

Warren the Investor and Paul the Central Banker vs. Joe the Plumber was never going to be much of a fair fight. Given the macroeconomic backdrop of recent years and the microeconomic disasters of recent weeks, neither was the presidential campaign, which is why Obama has won the White House.

Aides: We Didn't Obsess About Obama's Race

(CBS) Not getting obsessed about Barack Obama's race was one of the secrets of the successful campaign to put the first African American in the White House, Obama's closest counselors tell 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft.

The president-elect's four top campaign aides, political advisors David Axelrod and Anita Dunn, campaign manager David Plouffe and press secretary Robert Gibbs, were debriefed by Kroft on election night for a 60 Minutes segment to be broadcast this Sunday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Answering Kroft's question about whether race was a part of planning the campaign, Plouffe replies, "No, honestly, you had to take a leap of faith in the beginning that the people will get by race. And I think the number of meetings we had about race was zero," he says.

Adds Axelrod, "The only time we got involved in a discussion of race was when people asked us about it. It was a fascination of the news media…the political community," he tells Kroft. "But internally, it was not an obsession of ours."

The only time that Obama's race became a campaign issue for them was when the media began playing video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor, excoriating America's treatment of blacks from his pulpit. "That was a terrible weekend," Dunn remembers. "The excerpts were endlessly looped on television." Then, said Axelrod, "[Obama] said 'I'm going to make a speech about race and talk about Jeremiah Wright and the perspective of the larger issue…And either the people will accept it or I won't be president…'"

"As David [Plouffe] says, there wasn't discussion [on whether he should make a racial speech]," remembers Gibbs. And it's a good thing, says Dunn. "If there had been a discussion, we've often joked, probably most of the people in the campaign would have advised against it," she tells Kroft. The speech was crucial believes Plouffe. "It was a moment of real leadership. I think when he gave that race speech in Philadelphia, people saw a president…out of the ashes really, he rose as the candidate," says Plouffe.

Friday, November 7, 2008

President Elect Barack Obama has a news conference

By Jay Newton-Small / Chicago
Perhaps the most striking thing about Barack Obama's first press conference as president-elect was how, well, presidential it was.

In a nod to the formality of the occasion journalists and staff alike shed the jeans they'd been living in through the final weeks of the campaign and ironed out their wrinkled suits and skirts. The seating was assigned, with the names of news agencies scrawled on pieces of paper and taped to the backs of chairs, a first for the Obama organization. Reporters asked one another before hand if it would be appropriate to type notes as he spoke, as we always did when he was just a candidate. The answer quickly became clear: not a single computer remained on for the press conference.

Obama, uncharacteristically late in that presidential way where aides keep giving two minute warnings of his approach, slid into the formal role as easily as sliding back into a suit after working out at the gym. The president-elect delivered his first press conference with verve, as clear and articulate as ever, standing before a plain blue background and a row of U.S. flags that evoked the White House and the backdrop for his victory speech Tuesday night. His economic advisers and new chief of staff Rahm Emanuel flanked him (he had just come from meeting with them), many smiling and nodding encouragingly, not unlike parents proudly watching their kid deliver a valedictory speech. He called on reporters by their names from a card — a rarity for Obama, who in press conferences usually just points and says "yes" — even going so far as to use the order similar to that used by President Bush: the wires first, then the networks, the hometown Chicago reporters, and then the major papers. In another notable departure from the campaign, journalists formally stood to pose their questions.

On a day when new unemployment figures and auto maker losses revealed the depth of the country's economic woes, Obama was appropriately sober and brief, focusing most of his opening statement on his determination to pass a stimulus package and get the economy moving again. "It is not going to be quick and it is not going to be easy for us to dig ourselves out of the hole that we are in, but America is a strong and resilient country," he said in his opening statement. But the president-elect did seem in great spirits, joking with a small group of reporters who attended the beginning of the meeting with economic advisers. And he allowed himself a few light-hearted moments, laughing about a inquiry as to which kind of dog his daughters might be getting for the move into the White House.

"With respect to the dog, this is a major issue. I think it's generated more interest on our website than just about anything," Obama deadpanned. "We have — we have two criteria that have to be reconciled. One is that Malia is allergic, so it has to be hypo-allergenic. There are a number of breeds that are hypo-allergenic. On the other hand, our preference would be to get a shelter dog. But obviously, a lot of shelter dogs are mutts, like me. So the — so, whether we're going to be able to balance those two things, I think, is a pressing issue on the Obama household."(See pictures of Presidential First Dogs.)

Obama also said he's spoken with all "living" presidents, joking that "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances." He must have been taking advice on how to handle the press from those former leaders of the free world, as Obama did his best to make no news. Has he been given pause on any of his foreign policy positions now that he is receiving full intelligence briefings? "I'm going to skip that." Would he still raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 a year? "My tax plan represented a net tax cut. It provided for substantial middle-class tax cuts. Ninety-five percent of working Americans would receive them." How soon will he send low-level envoys to countries such as Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, to see if a presidential-level talk would be productive? "Obviously how we approach and deal with a country like Iran is not something that we should, you know, simply do in a kneejerk fashion."

Indeed, if one message was prevalent despite the formal, White House-esque atmosphere, it was: I am not president yet, I'm not rushing into anything, and I won't be baited into saying anything I will regret. From picking his cabinet ("I think it's very important in all these key positions, both in the economic team and the national security team, to — to get it right and — and not to be so rushed that you end up making mistakes.") to getting involved in economic policy during the lame duck session, Obama's answer time and again was: "We only have one president at a time." Clearly, at least until he is that president (and likely even after that), journalists will have to think harder of ways to pry new information from him.