| Author |
Message |
    
Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 6433
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 21, 2008 - 12:05 pm: | 
|
(Obama is saying that Bill Clinton is lying on him, that's bullshit.)
by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
Journal of African American Political Thought
The entry of Oprah Winfrey into the presidential fray has been the big news for more than a week. Speculation is rife about whether the supposed "Oprah effect" will carry Barack Obama to victory in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina. But sadly, mainstream journalism is no likelier to fact check Oprah than it is to report and discuss the actual stands of candidates on war, peace, heath care or housing.
"Over the years," Oprah told her mostly white Iowa audience Dec. 9, "I've voted for as many Republicans as I have Democrats." A smart marketer, Winfrey knows her audience. Working from the same script before an overwhelmingly black South Carolina crowd two days later she wisely dropped that line, and like Hillary Clinton in front of an African American audience, Oprah shifted into a noticeably blacker cadence than the one used in Iowa and New Hampshire.
"Long before it was the popular thing to do," declared Oprah in each city, Obama "stood with with clarity and conviction against this war in Iraq." It was the biggest applause line in her speech up to that point and good one. Trouble is, it just wasn't true.
When Barack Obama was a state legislator running for the U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2003 opposition to the war in Iraq was extremely popular in African American communities and among the progressive voters he needed in order to win. Brother Obama was on the case, doing what he had to do to sew up that vote early, showing up at local antiwar meetings and rallies, and making speeches like the one opposing "a dumb war" which is now trotted out as evidence of his fervent and prescient antiwar stand.
Bush invaded Iraq in March 2003, and by late May declared "mission accomplished" and victory in "the battle of Iraq" from the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln. With the president riding high in national polls, this reporter checked Obama's campaign web site and noted that all the evidence of and references to candidate Obama's prior opposition to the invasion of Iraq had been deleted. The visionary Barack Obama appeared to be leaning rightward with the prevailing wind, distancing himself from his prior opposition to the war.
After calls to Obama's campaign office yielded no satisfactory answers, we published an article in the June 5, 2003 issue of Black Commentator effectively calling Barack Obama out. We drew attention to the disappearance of any indication that U.S. Senate candidate Obama opposed the Iraq war at all from his web site and public statements. We noted with consternation that the Democratic Leadership Council, the right wing Trojan Horse inside the Democratic party, had apparently vetted and approved Obama, naming him as one of its "100 to Watch" that season. This is what real journalists are supposed to do --- fact check candidates, investigate the facts, tell the truth to audiences and hold the little clay feet of politicians and corporations to the fire.
Facing the possible erosion of his base among progressive Democrats in Illinois, Obama contacted us. We printed his response in Black Commentator's June 19 issue and queried the candidate on three "bright line" issues that clearly distinguish between corporate-funded DLC Democrats and authentic progressives. We concluded the dialog by printing Obama's response on June 26, 2003. For the convenience of our readers in 2007, all three of these articles can be found here.
Four years after senatorial candidate Barack Obama had to be summoned back into open opposition to the war in Iraq, scant weeks after his admission that he would not bring the troops home before the end of 2013, and in the face of dozens of public statements between 2003 and the present advocating an extra hundred thousand bodies to the Army and Marines, a higher Pentagon budget than even Bush is asking for, and the bombing of Iran and Pakistan, history has been rewritten to make Obama an early, consistent and principled voice for peace. This history is written, of course, by the same media that sold us the lies which enabled the war to begin with.
full article http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=469&I temid=1 |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 6152
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 2 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 02:30 pm: |
|
The Campaign in Black and White
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
He's a smart fellow and so Barack Obama surely knew what was in store for him if he ever looked like taking the Democratic nomination away from Hillary Clinton. The Clintons' relationship with African-Americans has always been starkly instrumental. When he was in trouble with white voters in New Hampshire in 1992 Governor Bill sprinted back to Little Rock to preside over the execution of a mentally retarded black man. To ensure her husband's victory in his reelection race in 1996 Hillary insisted Bill chop poor mothers--a good slice of them black--off the welfare rolls. Nonetheless many blacks rooted for Bill, absurdly dubbed by Toni Morrison "the first black president" and in the impeachment crisis over Monica Lewinsky they were his most steadfast friends, as Bill recognized when he summoned the Rev Jesse Jackson into the White House to help him pray for forgiveness and redemption.
Other well known landmarks in the Clintons' relations with blacks include Bill Clinton's set-up of Sister Souljah and his disgusting treatment of Lani Guinier and Jocelyn Elders. The Clintons reach out when they have no alternative and stab you in the back when it seems marginally to their advantage. They are without doubt among the most unprincipled duos ever to have operated in the upper tiers of American political life.
|
|
Email This Page