Don’t sell Barack ‘Obambi’ short
Los Angeles Times - CA,USA
BARACK OBAMA is learning — the hard way — that no good deed goes unpunished. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has already gone after him with charges of negative …

With its efforts to paint Obama as a negative campaigner showing so little promise, the Clinton campaign is shifting to a new tack. Now it is going after Obama for having tried to be polite about an issue that’s become one of Clinton’s greatest liabilities.

That would be her October 2002 vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq. That vote — and her continued refusal to call it a mistake — has many Democrats wondering just why she was so very wrong about the Bush administration’s case for war when a political newcomer like Obama was so very right.

Obama wasn’t in the Senate in 2002. But he made his views crystal clear in a speech on the same day that Clinton and 28 other Senate Democrats voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq: "I don’t oppose war in all circumstances…. What I do oppose is a dumb war…. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics."

Today, Obama’s speech looks prescient. He got it right on everything: Saddam Hussein’s lack of WMD; the costs in lives and money of an indefinite occupation; the likelihood that war in Iraq would divert resources from Afghanistan and "fan the flames of the Middle East … and strengthen … Al Qaeda."

Adding insult to injury, Obama still seems to be getting it right, nearly five years later. Congressional Democrats have coalesced around a version of Obama’s proposed Iraq plan. Clinton, meanwhile, finds herself in the galling position of watching Obama, a political babe in arms, emerge as the new standard-bearer for the Democratic Party.

Obama fights back on Iraq charges
Newsday

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pushed back yesterday against accusations by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign that his oft-repeated opposition to the Iraq war was not borne out by his Senate record.

In a conference call with reporters, Obama sought to squelch the charges by saying his Senate votes to continue funding the conflict don’t contradict his long-standing opposition to it.
"Once we were in, we were going to have some responsibility to try to make it work as best we can. More importantly, you make sure the troops are supported," the Illinois senator said. "I don’t think there’s any contradiction there whatsoever. We should not get in, once we were in we had to make the best of a bad situation."

Obama’s church asks reporters to play by the rules
Chicago Tribune - Chicago,IL,USA
Barack Obama’s decision to ask his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, not to deliver the benediction at his announcement to run for president in February. …

Obama gaining steam in Ohio
Cleveland Plain Dealer - Cleveland,OH,USA
There’s good news for Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy: The senator from Illinois is getting more popular in Ohio, while Democratic rival Sen. …

There’s good news for Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy: The senator from Illinois is getting more popular in Ohio, while Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York is holding steady at best.

Clinton still leads Obama by 10 points, however, 32 percent to 22 percent, in a poll released this morning by Quinnipiac University. So if the Ohio primary were held today, Clinton would win.

That presumes a lot. The dynamics of the primary race could change dramatically in the next year. They’ve already changed dramatically since January, when Quinnipiac put Clinton at 38 and a lesser-known Obama at only 13.

OFF THE BLOCK: The First Black President
Eurweb.com - Los Angeles,CA,USA
Barack Obama is the man and the time has finally come where, as Dr. King prophesied that a black person could be exclusively judged by the content of his …

Obama’s background boasts an unprecedented pedigree new to American presidential aspirants and his personal genetic makeup and early schooling is the epitome of cultural diversity and globalism. Obama’s potential as leader of the free world gives a whole new meaning to the term “The New World Order” given the changing circumstances in Asia, South America and Africa. Let us share his “audacity of hope” in believing that he can go all the way. His election as the first black president of the United States of America will validate the hopes and dreams of our ancestors while at the same time give our people, our country and even possibly the world the best chance to avert total planetary catastrophe that we have had since the presidential candidacy of Bobby Kennedy.