Clinton takes on Obama and McCain

As the Austin American Statesmen's editorial board (who just endorsed Sen. Obama) put it:

"Like a veteran slugger on deck, Hillary Clinton has campaigned principally on the logic that it is her turn at bat. Democrats must resist the instinct to select the next in line and grab instead the best hitter on the bench. That is Barack Obama."

Time for Hillary to sit this one out on the bench. Her rhetoric is getting old.

McCain will ask Clinton about how the Clintons funded the Clinton Library and Clinton's campaign. Won't be pretty and Clinton will lose to McCain http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/us/politics/20clinton.html

Democrats mustn't mistake endurance for experience.

"I've been trying to keep this on a level where the contrasts and comparisons are certainly fair, this is an election after all," said Clinton. "I've been trying very hard to set the right tone, to be focused on bringing the party together, bringing the country together but around specific goals."

While Mrs. Clinton's "tries" have been effective at dividing party and country, her "tries" have done little else. At every turn she demonstrates why she should return to private practice. She is not a person "of the people". In her total of seven years of elected office, Mrs. Clinton has only passed one bill; that being a million dollar monument in upstate NY for Woodstock. As of now, one of McCain's commercials shows the entire Republican panel of candidates laughing at his conversation over that piece of legislation.

Mr. Obama has served twelve years in elected public office, more than Mrs. Clinton ever has. Since serving as a United States Senator, he has gotten two bills to the President's desk and signed; one a lobbyist reform bill, the other usaspending.gov, a bipartisan piece with Senator Tom Coburn who will barely speak to Democrats, which illuminates ALL earmark spending and what legislator sponsored it.

While Mrs. Clinton "tries", Mr. Obama takes action.

Wake up people ...It's the economy (again) .... Stupid ... once (again) we need a Clinton to clean up the bush mess ...

Yep a decade is a long time to not change your mind about something, lol

For sure I am voting for Hillary. Why? Because I believe in all her Ideas.she's the best especially during the debate in Kodak theater. I enjoyed it very much.Can you replay that again and again . She's the combination of talent, a leader,fighter , everything that you can think of her. I'm so impressed with her. I really pray that she will win. I just feel bad with a lot of those commentators in the radio and televisions
they are all against her. I wish that all of them will be fair to her. Anyway they can't change my ideas.I'm better than them. Go girl.

Clinton is a dirty politician. She sank so low today that she had the audacity to compare Obama to Bush. I'm sick of her lies and distortions, I'm sick of not knowing which Clinton is actually running for president and I'm sick of her corrupt tactics. Obama is honorable and just. He was the only candidate to oppose the war in Iraq from the beginning, whereas Clinton has recently voted for what is essentially war in Iran too. People's lives mean nothing to her. Obama has taken ZERO third party interest money, and when he found out one of his donors was corrupt, he gave the $19000 to charity. Oh, yeah, and he has 12 years in state and national senate while she has only 7. Being married doesn't count as political experience, especially when the only real thing she worked on (healthcare) she sold out to the interest groups. We need Obama.

Read the NYTimes today. Barack was paid off by Energy lobbyists to dilute and defang his energy bill. Hah!

That explains why Exelon is one of his top donors. Oh, and Axelrod, his campaign manager? Is a consultant (read: lobbyist) for a Nuclear Power company.

OMG Obama is such a hypocrite!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?hp

Ugh, she's got some nerve. She has no business calling someone ELSE inconsistent! :(

Your over-ambitious, over-rated, ice-chilled mrs Clinton would be filling her days baking apple pie and doing a little lawyering on the side if she was not the wife of former President Bill Clinton, an totally immoral, ever womanizing non-performer. I hope Obama beats her convincingly and that he than loses equally convincingly from McCain, it would make this old world a better and safer place!

Without the "fame" of her husband Bill (immoral womanizer) she would be nowhere, at best just baking cookies and dabbling into a little legal divorce councelling on the side. She couldn't run her own kitchen sink, let alone the United States of America and the whole western hemisphere! I sincerely hope that she gets wiped out by Obama! And than I hope that he in turn gets totally wiped out by McCain, the only viable candidate for the Presidency of the great United States of America!

Hillary Clinton is sensing that Barack Obama is passing her and becoming the stronger candidate with a ground swell of support. She cannot remotely accept the notion of losing and lashes out emotionally, grasping at straws. Obama's words on gun control are bound to be many. It's been an issue on his table and she can pick and choose to concoct what suits the moment. That's not necessarily an indication of waffling by Obama. In the legislative processes on gun control in which he was involved, many aspects are discussed, such as personal preference, political reality, and opposing points of view. And why can't a person change position a bit as a result of learning in the process?
When Sen. Clinton stoops to such nitpicking to make her points, what does that really tell us about her?

Obama's speech (October, 2002):

Good afternoon. Let me begin by saying that although this has been billed as an anti-war rally, I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances.

The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don't oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain.

I don't oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this Administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

I don't oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other arm-chair, weekend warriors in this Administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income - to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Now let me be clear - I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He's a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars.

So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president today. You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that the UN inspectors can do their work, and that we vigorously enforce a non-proliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil, through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair.

The consequences of war are dire, the sacrifices immeasurable. We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war. But we ought not - we will not - travel down that hellish path blindly. Nor should we allow those who would march off and pay the ultimate sacrifice, who would prove the full measure of devotion with their blood, to make such an awful sacrifice in vain.

VOTE OBAMA FOR PRESIDENT!

I am a firm Democrat but I am one of those rare birds, a liberal who also firmly believes in the 2nd Amendment right of citizens to own firearms for hunting, sports, and personal defense. I am leaning toward Obama because down deep I distrust Hillary -- however, I am concerned about the contradictions and gaps in some of Obama's past remarks. For example, if you search internet for Obama's position on gun control you find remarks like he is in favor of "banning semi-automatic weapons." Taken literally, that would reduce the USA weapons technology back to the level of 1911, when the first semi-automatic pistol was introduced. Now I find that Obama has said, "“I have no intention of taking away folks' guns.” Obama and his advisors are either naive and ignorant on gun technology, or liars.