Mrs Obama steps into the spotlight
Times Online - UK
The wife of Barack Obama, the presidential candidate who is tussling with Hillary Clinton to become the Democratic choice to succeed President Bush, …

And in recent weeks Mrs Obama, who is tall and striking, has also deployed alone on the campaign trail, making speeches in churches in Illinois and Carolina. In a letter sent to potential donors earlier this month she wrote: "I’m now one of those ‘other’ kind of people Barack talks about — the people who believe democracy can live up to its promise, who are not just willing to do their part to make it work but who are enthused about the prospect."

Michelle Obama: Campaigning her way
USA Today - USA
Barack Obama, is a top contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, but in an interview with USA TODAY, she admits she hasn’t thought much about …

Obama, 43, says she has overcome the qualms she once had about her husband’s political career and presidential ambitions. She says she’s comfortable being his emissary, collecting the concerns and hopes of the voters she meets and sharing them with him. A vice president of the University of Chicago Hospitals, she now works part time and limits her campaigning to day trips so she can make breakfast for their daughters — Malia, 8, and Sasha, 5 — and be home in time to tuck them in at night.

She used to have a cynical view of politics, she says, because politicians she admired — but won’t identify — were "afraid of taking a stand because they don’t want to lose their seat or their position."

"I never had doubt about what Barack could offer, and that’s what kind of spiraled me out of my own doubt," she says. "I don’t want to be the person that holds back a potential answer" to the nation’s challenges. She had to overcome concerns that her husband could get "chewed up" by the whole "messy business" of politics, she says.

Obama Renews Pressing Grassley on Iraq
Washington Post - Washington,DC,USA
INDIANOLA, Iowa — Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama stepped up his pressure on Republican Sen. Charles Grassley on Thursday, arguing voters …

INDIANOLA, Iowa — Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama stepped up his pressure on Republican Sen. Charles Grassley on Thursday, arguing voters should urge the Iowa lawmaker to help override President Bush’s veto of a bill that would set a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

Obama addressed the issue during the eighth campaign swing through Iowa since he declared his candidacy for president.

"It isn’t personal," Obama told about 300 people at a town hall meeting at Simpson College. "I respect him greatly. But I said then and I say now that he needs to hear from you and people across Iowa who understand that it’s time to change course."

Obama has made his opposition to the war in Iraq a central theme of his campaign.

Barack Gets It Right On Limbaugh’s "Barack The Magic Negro" Parody
Huffington Post - New York,NY,USA
That’s how Presidential candidate Barack Obama responded when Paul W. Smith with Detroit’s WJR Radio asked him about the Rush Limbaugh’s parody song "Barack …

Obama didn’t take Limbaugh’s bait. Good for him. Obama understands that the continuing name calling from the right further confirms his skyrocketing viability as the Democratic nominee.

Obama also understands that talking about race is a scary thing in America. Especially for a politician. Race is a third rail issue that can end a career. Obama knows that race is a huge elephant in his room and both the Obama haters and the Obamaniacs are watching his every word on all things racial. Obama also understands that he doesn’t need to care what Limbaugh’s listeners think. They aren’t voting for him.

So, instead of a even criticizing Limbaugh, Obama deftly swats off the controversy with humor, which shows leadership. Obama knows to win that it’s not worth making Rush’s molehill more of a mountain. Like the Rutgers’s ladies, Obama is a class act.

Obama Has Harlem Locked
New California Media - San Francisco,CA,USA
Senator Barack Obama will have the Black vote solidly in his corner if street pundits along Harlem’s famed 125th Street are to be taken as a measure of how …

Senator Barack Obama will have the Black vote solidly in his corner if street pundits along Harlem’s famed 125th Street are to be taken as a measure of how African Americans are weighing their votes between the Illinois senator and New York’s Hillary Clinton. Coincidentally, top Harlem politician Bill Perkins today announced his endorsement of Obama.

Some of the people interviewed say they don’t want to see a Clinton dynasty, while others say she panders too much to the right with her stance on the Iraq war and unquestioned backing for Israel. At the end of the day, Obama will win Black votes because he’s the first Black presidential candidate with a realistic chance at winning the White House, many say.

Obama represents generational change
Coshocton Tribune - Coshocton,OH,USA
SAN DIEGO - As someone who could become the first African-American president, Barack Obama can’t help but make history - even the unwelcome kind. …

An Obama presidency would be a refreshing change and would almost certainly benefit from the fact that the candidate is not burdened by what he calls the "psychodrama of the baby boom generation" with its endless feuds, grudges and hard feelings dating back to the conflicts of the 1960s. If nothing else, it’ll be a nice change - from this point forward - not to hear every foreign policy challenge described as "another Vietnam."

OK, we get it. That war went a long way toward defining the baby boomers. But that doesn’t mean it has to define our nation’s foreign policy for the next century. It’s time to bury those ghosts.

Fifty years from now, people will look back and they won’t believe that during the 2004 presidential election - the first since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 - the debate in America wasn’t really over the location of Osama bin Laden but over whether John Kerry was ever in Cambodia or whether George W. Bush spent the requisite amount of time in Alabama to maintain his status as a member of the Air National Guard. You would have thought we could have found something more urgent to focus on - like how best to combat the threat of global terrorism.

We need a new national mindset, and step one is to usher in a new generation of leaders. One waits in the wings.

Obama taps influential foreign policy experts
Chicago Sun-Times Thu, 10 May 2007 3:24 AM PDT
The inner circle of foreign policy experts advising Sen. Barack Obama is small but influential. If he is elected president, his secretary of state and national security advisers may come from this group.

For Obama’s presidential bid, Senate staffer Mark Lippert is the critical link between the campaign, the Senate staff and the senator. Lippert has accompanied Obama on the three international trips Obama has taken while in office. Lippert, who has a master’s from Stanford in international policy, has had a hand in every major Obama speech and statement on international affairs and deals with the senator daily.

Lippert, a lieutenant junior grade in the Navy Reserve, came to Obama after working on the Senate Appropriations Committee Foreign Operations Subcommittee for five years and has handled foreign policy and defense issues for the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

Besides Lippert, the core Obama group consists of three people who worked in President Bill Clinton’s administration: former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and former senior State Department officials Susan Rice and Gregory Craig. They meet regularly in Washington. Lake was the NSA adviser during Clinton’s first term. Rice was the senior adviser on national security affairs for the Kerry-Edwards campaign in 2004, an assistant secretary of state for African affairs and a special assistant to the president at the National Security Council at the Clinton White House.

Obama’s Economic Brain Trust Breaks With `Status Quo’
Bloomberg via Yahoo! News Thu, 10 May 2007 8:27 AM PDT
May 10 (Bloomberg) — Senator Barack Obama portrays himself as a new kind of leader who transcends conventional politics. Judging by the economists he has enlisted in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he may just be.

May 10 (Bloomberg) — Senator Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) portrays himself as a new kind of leader who transcends conventional politics. Judging by the economists he has enlisted in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he may just be.

Obama’s economic brain trust — a blend of up-and-coming academics and former officials in President Bill Clinton’s administration — displays a fondness for backing innovative solutions to the nation’s problems. Among them: offering ailing U.S. automakers aid in return for increased investment in hybrid cars and rewarding doctors for the improvements they make in patients’ health.

“They bring to the campaign some fresh thought on approaches that are non-status quo,'’ says Alan Blinder, a Princeton University economist and former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve.

EXCLUSIVE: George Stephanopoulos Interviews Presidential Hopeful Barack Obama
ABC News Thu, 10 May 2007 9:53 AM PDT
Obama Sits Down for First Sunday Morning Interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos