Now that Obama realizes that American people REALLY favor offshore drilling, he is supporting offshore drilling as part of a comprehensive energy policy. But he says he will never let drilling be the end all be all solution. Gee Obama, have you not been listening to McCain and other Republicans whom have said that they want drilling to be part of the solution, which also includes alternative energy sources? So Obama is "changing" his position now, and that's great, because I think the American people will benefit from his change in position.

 

 

EHH???

 

After harping at McCain for weeks about how McCain flip-flopped on offshore drilling for political expediency, and how offshore drilling is a gimmick (just like gas tax holiday), and how offshore drilling will not help lower gas prices "yesterday, today, or tomorrow," Obama has the audacity to say that supporting offshore drilling is NOT a new position of his??? Obama clearly has some sort of mental issue where he just cannot allow himself to say that he changed his position on any issue -- gun control, Rev. Wright, gay marriage, public financing, war in Iraq, and now offshore drilling. While Obama uses the word "change" as his campaign standard, clearly, Obama fears the word change, whether the change is brought about by a belief that he is doing the right thing, or because of political expediency.

DISCLAIMER: THIS BLOG IS PLAGIARIZED FROM DAMIANO, OF TEXAS, who wrote this great comment in Amanda Carpenter's blog about Obama's plan to take from oil companies and give more money to the "people." I thought it was excellent, and quite on point. Simple math that everyone with a math education past 7th grade should understand.

========================

Subject: Buy Obama A Calculator
This is not complex math or insightful economics.

1. Revenue= $138 billion;
Profit= $11.68 billion;
or approximately 8.5 % profit, far less that the majority of public companies in the world. Profits are below projections and expectations for this quarter. Since when is a company that fell below profit expectations and that has significantly smaller margins that most other companies consider to have "windfall profits" in need of government control?

2. Let's assume the same profit for 4 quarters: 11.68 x 4= 46.72 billion.
Obama proposes a $50 billion package
46.2- 50= -3.28 billion dollar deficit; assuming that Obama take 100% of the companies profit. Since when is creating ANOTHER deficit a good thing? Who is it that gained from this again?

3. So, we have a $3.28 billion deficit, the largest companies in the nation (and the world) with zero percent profit and everyone gets $500? Sorry, how does this help the economy again.

4. Yes, my math is oversimplified (clearly Obama and his supporters can't understand anything more complex, so I apologize to the smart people out there). To offset my significant margin for error, allow me to provide a buffer. Here is today's market closing numbers, after the news hit that big oil missed it's profit expectations (but there was no additional spending or deficit announced)- DOW -53, NASDAQ -20.75, S&P -6.8. Since when are negatives across the board a good thing?

So... what are we left with? Obama, AGAIN, baiting the ignorant with Robin Hood economics and offer $500 - $1000 for each person that votes for him.

I thought that bribery in campaigns was illegal? If it's not bribery, what is it? This surely cannot be passed off as an economic policy.

Remember when Obama first said back in June that Republicans would try to scare voters by mentioning that he is black? I gave him a pass for that, because I thought that he was pre-emptively striking any attempts by his opponents to inject race into the presidential campaign. But he has now used slight variations of this same talking point at least three more times during his campaign yesterday with the slight variations. Instead of saying the word black, Obama is now saying that Republicans will try to scare people by saying that he doesn't look like the presidents in the dollar bills.

 

After getting called out by the McCain campaign for playing the race card when no one in the McCain campaign has told voters not to vote for Obama because he is black, Obama's campaign manager David Axelrod said the following during NBC's "Today" show:

 

 

I suppose that all the people who heard those statements by Obama, and who immediately felt that he was playing the race card, are "nobody" in the eyes of Mr. Axelrod.

 

Another Obama campaign aide Robert Gibbs said that:

 

"He (Obama) was referring to the fact that he didn't come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race."

 

Then in further response to the controversy, the same Mr. Axelrod, who first accused McCain of fabricating the race controversy, says in "Good Morning America" that:

 

 

Now, if that is not an admission then what? Unfortunately, as mainstream media goes, the host of Good Morning America did not follow up on Mr. Axelrod's own statement that Obama was referring to race, and just moved on to commenting how Republicans are trying to "get attention." Be that as it may, Obama played the race card in June when he explicitly said the word "black." And the usage was in the exact same context as the "does not look like the presidents in dollar bills" usage that he said three separate times yesterday. Now McCain probably knows how President Clinton felt when the Obama campaign used the race card against him.

 

http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0808/House_Dems_turn_out_out_the_light_but_GOP_keep_talking.html

Obama said "If the Democrats can make clear our vision, which is not for larger government but is for a responsive, efficient, and honest government that is listening to the voices of the American people ..." in a press conference yesterday.

 

Is Obama still experimenting with the stuff he used in his youger days? Democrats not for larger government?? Democrats for a responsive government that listens to the voice of the American people?? In case Obama and Democrats have not noticed, Congress' approval ratings is 17%. That's lower than President Bush's 29% approval rating. In case Obama and Democrats have not noticed, latest polling data shows that 75% of Americans polled SUPPORT additional offshore drilling in our country. When told about the overwhelming public support for offshore drilling, Democrat Senator Harry Reid dismissed the polling data. Meanwhile Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called offshore drilling a HOAX on the American people. How is that for listening to the voices of the American people??

Yet another story painting a not so bright picture about Obama's character, and that we will never hear about in mainstream media. This story comes from an UK publication. One wonders why we don't hear anything about Obama's relatives in Kenya. Well, here's the answer.

Barack Obama's broken promise to African village
David Cohen, Evening Standard, July 25, 2008

It is an extraordinary sight to walk into a basic two-room house under a mango tree in rural east Africa and discover what is essentially a shrine to Barack Obama.

The small brick house with no running water, a tin roof and roving chickens, goats and cows is owned by Sarah Obama, Barack's 86-year-old step-grandmother. Inside, the walls are decorated with a 2008 Obama election sticker, an old "Barack Obama for Senate" poster on which he has written "Mama Sarah Habai [how are you?]", a 2005 calendar that says "The Kenyan Wonder Boy in the US", and more than a dozen family photos.

But this bucolic scene in his father's village of Kogelo near the Equator in western Kenya conceals a troubling reality that, until now, has never been spoken about. Barack Obama, the Evening Standard can reveal, after we went to the village earlier this month, has failed to honour the pledges of assistance that he made to a school named in his honour when he visited here amid great fanfare two years ago.

At that historic homecoming in August 2006 Obama was greeted as a hero with thousands lining the dirt streets of Kogelo. He visited the Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School built on land donated by his paternal grandfather. After addressing the pupils, a third of whom are orphans, and dancing with them as they sang songs in his honour, he was shown a school with four dilapidated classrooms that lacked even basic resources such as water, sanitation and electricity.

He told the assembled press, local politicians (who included current Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga), and students: "Hopefully I can provide some assistance in the future to this school and all that it can be." He then turned to the school's principal, Yuanita Obiero, and assured her and her teachers: "I know you are working very hard and struggling to bring up this school, but I have said I will assist the school and I will do so."

Obiero says that although Obama did not explicitly use the word "financial" to qualify the nature of the assistance he was offering, "there was no doubt among us [teachers] that is what he meant. We interpreted his words as meaning he would help fund the school, either personally or by raising sponsors or both, in order to give our school desperately-needed modern facilities and a facelift". She added that 10 of the school's 144 pupils are Obama's relatives. Obiero was not the only one to think that the US Senator from Illinois, who had recently acquired a $1.65 million house in Chicago, would cough up. Obama's own grandmother Sarah confidently told reporters before his visit: "When he comes down here, he will change the face of the school and, believe me, our poverty in Kogelo will be a thing of the past."

But the Evening Standard has heard that the promises he made to help the school as well as a local orphanage appear to have been empty.

Seven months ago I travelled to Iowa to cover the start of the US primaries and was impressed by Obama's charisma and integrity as he kicked off a thrilling battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Now, with only John McCain standing in the way of him making history as America's first black President, and amid the fanfare over his current world tour, nowhere is this possibility more eagerly awaited than in Kogelo, the place where his father and grandfather are buried. Yet there is disappointment and hurt here, too. Granting us access to the school and its records, Principal Obiero, 48, tells us: "Senator Obama has not honoured the promises he gave me when we met in 2006 and in his earlier letter to the school. He has not given us even one shilling. But we still have hope."

The letter Obiero refers to - dated 22 June 2005, signed by Obama and addressed to her - was written after his election to the US Senate in 2004 and hangs, framed, on the wall of her spartan office alongside photographs of Obama's visit to their school. It says: "I am honoured that you have decided to rename the Kogelo School in my name.

The land that the school is built on was donated by my grandparents and I am proud to carry on the tradition of supporting the school."

Obiero and her board of governors followed up his letter offering " support" with a bald, formal request for funds in the form of a nine-page proposal, a copy of which has been provided to the Evening Standard, laying out their ambitions for the school. In it they ask for 8.2 million Kenyan shillings (approximately £65,000) to upgrade the school. The money would be used, they say, to bring water to the school by sinking a borehole and building a water tank, erect a perimeter fence, complete the science laboratory and add muchneeded new classrooms, additional latrines, and a school dining hall.

Obiero recalls: "When the US Ambassador William Bellamy came to visit the school for the official renaming ceremony in February 2006, we gave him two copies of the proposal, one for the Embassy and one to give to Senator Obama. But we have not heard anything from either of them since."

Recently, she adds, she gave another copy of the proposal to Obama's Kenyan half-sister, Auma Obama, who recently returned to Nairobi after living in England and working in children's services in Reading. Auma had been married to a British man but they are now divorced. "Auma also promised to pass it on to her brother," says Obiero.

When we ask an Obama spokesperson in Kenya, who is also a family member, why no support has been forthcoming, he says: "We have no comment, the family are not doing any interviews at this time."

However, the school's senior teacher Dalmas Raloo, 41, who is often used as a translator for Obama's grandmother who only speaks Luo, and is a friend of the family, says the family are mystified by what they are calling "Obama's lapse". "If you ask whether Obama's family think he should give something to the village and to the school, the answer is 'yes, definitely'. But they feel it should come from him spontaneously. They don't want to ask him for it."

During Obama's visit to the school, he opened their half-finished science laboratory (built with £4,900 raised by the community) and wrote in the visitor's book: "Congratulations on the new laboratory!" Today, the lab has been mothballed because they ran out of funds to equip it and because, critically, there is no running water. "We must pay the man with the donkey to fetch us water from the river four kilometres away," says Obiero. The situation in the school mirrors that of Kogelo village where the people live without water, electricity or access to proper healthcare and on average incomes of less than $1 a day. Yet they remain diehard fans of the man who has put their rural community on the map and have even renamed the beer, called Senator, in his honour: locals now order "an Obama".

Obama's "lapse" is all the more difficult to understand given that he wrote in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams from My Father, that Kogelo occupies a special place in his heart as being where he reconciled the diverse parts of himself - American and African, white mother and black father. Obama wrote how he fell to his knees, sobbing, between the graves of his father and grandfather at the family compound.

"When my tears were finally spent," he wrote, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realised that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America - the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago - all of it was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away."

Obama had visited Kogelo for the first time in the 1980s after attending Columbia University and then again in 1991 to research his memoirs after graduating from Harvard Law School. He would later become a civil rights lawyer and community organiser before going into politics and serving in the Illinois Senate in 1997 and then the US Senate in 2004.

On those two voyages of personal discovery to Kogelo, he learned that his grandfather, Hussein Onyango Obama, who lived to 105 according to his gravestone (1870-1975), had been a respected elder and witchdoctor. But it was the road travelled by his estranged father, Barack Hussein Obama, that inspired and intrigued him. His father had transcended his roots as a goat herder to get a PhD at Harvard and work for the Kenyan government before falling from grace and dying in a car accident in 1982 at just 46.

Barack's father, an economist, had split up with his white mother, Ann Dunham, from Kansas, when Barack was two. Apart from a month-long visit from his father when he was 10 years old, Obama would know him only through letters. As an adult he learned there was a darker side to his father, reflecting in his book that he had apparently also been "a bitter drunk", "an abusive husband", and "a defeated, lonely bureaucrat". But during this process of soul-searching he came to know and adore the elderly woman who had raised his father, his step-grandmother Sarah Obama.

We had been told that Sarah's house, which is adjacent to the school, was patrolled by two armed security guards - who pays their wages is not clear - but when we visited the home, Sarah was away in Nairobi and we were shown in by one of Obama's young cousins.

The house is basic with a concrete floor, an outside kitchen, latrines and no running water. The only sign of modernity is the recently installed solar power unit that provides electricity for lights and a television set. Chairs are neatly laid out around the sides of the living room, each with an embroidered cover and as you enter, there is a photograph of a young Barack Obama bent over under the weight of a sack of maize.

THE graves of Obama's father and grandfather are in the yard, and Obama's cousins and uncles, including Said Obama, 41, his father's younger brother, also live on the compound in smaller one-room houses. Behind the house there is a thriving maize plantation and a clump of banana trees in addition to the giant mango trees that dominate the property. Villagers say that despite her age, Sarah Obama still comes to market where she sells her homegrown fruit and vegetables.

The market is where we head next to speak to villagers about their hopes for an Obama victory in November and what it might do for their village. Mary Manasse, 40, who runs the Mama Siste Mini Shop selling staples such as bread and cow's milk (packaged in old Coke bottles) says she has a photograph of Obama shaking hands with her on his 2006 visit.

"Back then I was looking after 40 orphans at the orphan centre," she recalls. "We faced a desperate shortage of money and Obama told us that he especially liked special, dedicated projects like ours and wanted to help. We thought he would give funds to help our project but we got nothing. A few months later we were forced to shut down the orphan centre because of lack of funds. Just a million Kenyan shillings [£6,000] would have kept us going another year. I feel disappointed that he did not come through."

A few stalls away mango-seller Gladys Anyango, 60, does an impromptu Obama impression to the amusement of her fellow peddlers. She places her hands on her hips, gazes into the middle distance and, mimicking his deep voice, says: "How are you, people of Kogelo?" Her friends collapse with laughter. She also takes off Obama's wife, Michelle, who had accompanied him on his visit along with his two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

"Oh, but there will be a big party here when Obama wins," she adds. "We still have hope that he will bring electricity and build schools so the children have a good education. Maybe when he's President of America, he'll remember his roots and look after his community in Kenya."

"Pretty good timetable" ...

 

Surge was about "counter-insurgency tactics"  and not about "more troops."

 

John, what in the world are you talking about? Rest assured that in the next few months, we are going to be hearing these words over and over and over again -- especially the "pretty good timetable" comment by McCain in reference to Obama's 16 month withdrawal timetable. And it will not matter what McCain's explanations are. It will be what the American people perceive what those comments were meant to say.

 

Obama has made so many blunders of his own, and yet, in my opinion, the McCain campaign has failed to capitalize and expose those blunders to the American people. As noted in my blog before, Obama's proclamation of being "correct" about a 16 month withdrawal timetable is only "correct" because of the stability in Iraq brought upon by the surge in American troops. In other words, Obama's self-validation is totally baseless. Recall that Obama's original expressed intent to withdraw the troops was because he thought we should not be in Iraq at all, and that the war was lost. The timetable was certainly NOT advocated because the situation in Iraq is good enough for the U.S. to withdraw its troops. Why hasn't McCain come out and explicitly pointed that out? Instead, not only does Obama have Maliki on the record talking favorably about the 16 month timetable, but Obama also has McCain saying that it is a "pretty good timetable." In the same statement, McCain also said that conditions on the ground should still control the rate of troop withdrawal, but those words are not enough to combat the implication that McCain endorsed Obama's 16 month timetable. McCain ought to know better than that. McCain could have said that it's a "pretty good timetable, but it's only a pretty good timetable THANKS TO THE SURGE!"

 

Similarly, McCain has been trying to hammer Obama on opposing the surge of troops. McCain's point has been that the increase of American troops brought about stability. Now McCain mentions that the surge was about "counter-insurgency strategy" and not about "more troops." What in the world??

 

The McCain campaign really needs to step it up. And McCain really needs to think before saying stuff. Obama can afford to make bone headed remarks, because the mainstream media and his "likeability" allow him some wiggle room. McCain has no wiggle room. He needs to run the perfect campaign. So far, McCain's campaign is far from perfect.

In a recent interview with Bill Hemmer during this European tour, Obama told Hemmer that the trip overseas "confirmed my strategies." On the preview clip that Fox News aired this Saturday morning, Obama goes on to describe the strategy: (1) send more troops to Afghanistan; (2) Iraqis are willing to take more responsibility over the security of their country; and (3) Iran is a grave threat.

 

Isn't Obama just stating the obvious? Yet, Obama likes to talk about the obvious as if he was the first one to think of it. Send more troops to Afghanistan ... is that anything new? Iraq's security by Iraqis ... is that anything new? Iran is a grave threat ... is that anything new? These are positions that others have advocated for months if not years.

 

Not to beat on a dead horse any more than I already have in my blog, but Obama conveniently fails to note that the Iraqi willingness and ability to take on more responsibility for the security of Iraq can be directly attributed to the surge of American troops that Obama vehemently opposed and called a failure. Recall that Obama not only predicted failure but also predicted that the surge would only lead to additional violence. Perhaps someone needs to ask him that question, as opposed to just merely asking him whether or not he agrees that the surge was a success. Because you know Obama is always going to squirm his way past that question of success. As a lawyer, I've encountered hundreds of witnesses who squirm like Obama does when the topic of the surge comes up. "Well ... ehh ... ahh ... it really depends ... eh ... on what the definition of success is ..." Someone please ask Obama about the prediction that the surge would lead to more violence. There is no squirming around that question, unless Obama wants to look and sound really stupid by saying that it depends on what the definition of violence is.

 

Oh yeah, never mind. The strategy of "Iran is a grave threat" is indeed something new. But only to Obama, who had originally said that Iran is a little country who does not pose any danger.

Was the Obama visit of American troops in Germany scheduled for the purposes of publicity? Why did Obama not visit the troops in Germany as originally planned? Politico.com writer Jonathan Martin recently reported about Pentagon's explanation of the reason behind the Obama's decision not to visit American troops in Germany.

 

 

Chief Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell confirmed to Politico that Department of Defense officials cautioned Barack Obama's campaign that his planned visit to wounded American troops in Germany could not be political in nature and that he would be barred from bringing along campaign staff and reporters. He also said that Cindy McCain recently requested to visit sailors aboard the U.S.N.S. Comfort and was denied.

"Sen. Obama is welcome to visit Landstuhl or any military hospital in his official capacity as a United States senator," Morrell said in a brief interview. "But there is a DOD policy which governs campaigning and electioneering at military facilities that would have to be respected if he were to visit. That distinction was relayed and made clear to campaign, and they made a decision on their own based on that guidance."

Morrell, in a subsequent interview, added that military officials told Obama he could only visit the military facility with his Secret Service detail and Senate staff.

"We made it clear to him that campaign staff and press would not be permitted to accompany him," Morrell said of Obama. "We relayed those ground rules. They made a choice based upon the information we relayed to them. It was their choice. We had nothing to do with it."

Military personnel at Ramstein Air Force Base, where the senator was to fly into, had already made arrangements to accommodate Obama's traveling press pack and campaign staff while he visited the wounded troops, Morrell said.

Obama's campaign tells a different story.

Obama adviser David Axelrod told the Chicago Sun-Times that the Pentagon "viewed this as a campaign event, and therefore they said he should not come."

In a briefing to Obama's traveling press corps, another adviser stopped short of saying they were told to not come but also suggested that even a visit by Obama alone may have been at issue.

Robert Gibbs said one of Obama's military advisers had been informed by the Pentagon that the visit may be seen as a campaign stop.

"They cited a regulation," Gibbs said of their point of contact, described as legislative affairs in the office of the secretary.

"We believed that based on the information we received that any presence, even his own and only his own, would get into a back and forth on whether his own presence was a campaign event," Gibbs said.

Gibbs also pointed out that that their plane had been cleared to land at Ramstein and the Pentagon subsequently issued the reminder about political activity at military posts.

Obama, who was not traveling with any Senate staffers, decided on the flight Wednesday from Tel Aviv to Berlin not to visit the hospital.

Trying to make clear that this was not an attempt to undercut the Democratic nominee, Morrell also noted that when McCain officials asked the Pentagon for permission to let Cindy McCain visit the massive U.S. hospital ship, the U.S.N.S. Comfort, the request was rejected.

"Had she gone with Sen. McCain, it would have been OK," Morrell said, underlining the delineation between what are official and campaign activities.

 

 

After reading the statements made by the Pentagon, the implication is that Obama decided not to visit the troops, because he would not have been able to publicize the visit in light of the fact that his campaign staff and the press corp would not have been allowed in the premises. In short, Obama only wanted to visit the troops for the publicity. But did the Pentagon intend to make this implication through the statements made by Geogg Morrell? Were the statements made by Morrell accurate? Or was Obama really told that he should not come? You decide.

I just don't get why the McCain campaign isn't exploiting this Texas sized hole in the reasoning of Obama's self proclaimed "right judgment" regarding troop withdrawal in Iraq. The Obama campaign and his surrogates are touting over and over again how Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi government want a timetable for American troop withdrawal, and how Maliki agrees with Obama's timetable. Hence, according to Obama's campaign, he has been right all along and "now" is the time to pull our troops out.

 

I am a fair guy, and I will say that if the Maliki-lead government of Iraq wants us to leave, we should leave. But does anyone in his or her right mind believe that Maliki would be saying this except for the fact that he believes that Iraq is stable enough for Iraqi troops to completely take over the security of Iraq? And what has brought about stability in Iraq? Some liberal extremists and Obama himself continue to deny that the surge was the key factor that lead to stability in Iraq. Fine, let them dispute the success of the surge. However, reasonable minds cannot dispute that had we followed Obama's Iraq policy of immediate withdrawal of American troops last year, the stability in Iraq today would not exist! Maliki certainly would not be talking in July 2008 about American troop withdrawal. So why is Obama being allowed to revel on having the "right judgment" to say that American troops can be withdrawn from Iraq in 16 months? The McCain campaign and his surrogates need to be out there pointing out the idiocy of Obama's patting himself on the back for having the "right judgment" about troop withdrawal timeline.

 

The McCain campaign also needs to be doing a whole lot better exposing what Obama said in 2004 about being against troop withdraw and "artificial" deadline:

 

 

The McCain campaign did put a great montage together regarding all the contradictions made by Obama regarding Iraq (which does include parts of Obama's 2004 interview noted above), but the message is just not getting out to the people:

 

 

So if you were John McCain, what would you do to help Americans see past the Obama PR machine?

 

Military Times: Can we talk about your Iraq policy for a moment? Particularly where you talk about withdrawing one or two brigades every month soon after you are elected as a process to get us down quickly. What will you do if your military commanders advise against that and they tell you you can’t do that? Like [Army Gen. David] Petraeus I think said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — you were there — that this is going to put everything at risk, my God you can’t do that.

OBAMA: Look, I’ve said this repeatedly from the start, and so I welcome the opportunity to correct the record. This whole notion that I would initiate a precipitous withdrawal just isn’t borne out by anything that I’ve said. What I have repeatedly said from the start, when I introduced my first piece of legislation on this issue in January of 2007 is that we should be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in ....

 

 

"Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq and there never was ... The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq's leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year - now."

 

 

Military Times: If the withdrawal doesn’t begin as soon as you take office, when would you like it to begin? What kind of strategy would you set in terms of timing?

OBAMA: It’s very hard to anticipate what it’s going to be like six months from now. We saw how rapidly things have changed over the last six months, because of not only the extraordinary work of our armed forces, but also the shift in attitudes of tribal leaders in places like Anbar, the Mahdi army’s decision to — for now at least — to stand down the more aggressive posture that the Maliki government took in going into places like Basra. So if current trends continue and we are at a position where we continue to see reductions in violence and stabilization and continue to see some improvements on the part of the Iraqi army and Iraqi police, then my hope would be that we could draw down in a deliberate fashion in consultation with the Iraqi government at a pace that is determined in consultation with General Petraeus and the other commanders on the ground. It strikes me that that is something we could begin relatively soon after inauguration. If, on the other hand, you’ve got a deteriorating situation for some reason, then that’s going to have to be taken into account.

(4) It is your position today that General Petraeus' assessment of the situation in Iraq is an important factor regarding the rate of troop withdrawal. But when you called for the immediate commencement of troop withdrawal in September 2007, you had not had any meetings with General Petraeus regarding the subject matter. In fact, when you articulated your withdrawal schedule last week, you still had not discussed these matters with General Petraeus. Was General Petraeus' assessment of the Iraq situation not relevant to you back in September 2007?

Anyone notice how Obama and the Democrats like to use the word "inartful?" It's like Roger Clemens using the word "misremembered." Whenever Obama flip flops on an issue, neither he nor the Democrats can bring themselves to admit that there has been a change in position. Never mind that a good leader needs to be flexible and ready to change his or her position, IF there are circumstances that call for a such a change in position. Only problem for Obama is that political expedience, his inexperience and ineptitude do not fall in the category of "circumstances that call for such a change in position." Consequently, Obama and his surrogates have to hold the party line that there has been no change in position. Maybe they were "inartful." But heavens knows that "my policy hasn't changed, and it's been very consistent"!!

 

I suppose Obama was only being inartful when he said that he would use public funds for campaign if his Republican counterpart did the same. Then he inartfully said that he never agreed to it. He was merely "considering" it.

 

Remember the ban on gun issue? When completing a questionnaire, someone in the Obama campaign answered that Obama believes that the D.C. ban on guns is a good law. Obama himself said last year that he supported the D.C. gun ban. After Obama initially refused to comment about his thoughts of how the U.S. Supreme Court should decide on the lawsuit against the D.C. gun ban, Obama finally said that he believes that the 2nd Amendment gives individuals the right to bear arms. When asked about prior representations that he and his campaign made that Obama supported the D.C. gun ban, Obama's referred to the earlier statements as "inartful." Obama's campaign then said that a "clerk" made a mistake when answering the questionnaire.

 

When Katie Couric interviewed Obama and asked him about his comment about keeping Jerusalem undivided, and then backtracking on that statement after getting flak, Obama's response was: "We just had phrased it poorly in the speech ... But my policy hasn't changed, and it's been very consistent." Way to be "inartful" again Mr. Obama.

 

I suppose Obama was also being "inartful" when he told Couric that the conditions on the ground in Iraq had improved significantly, that U.S. troops have helped reduce violence in Iraq, while still refusing to support the surge or even directly acknowledge that the surge in troops brought about the current level of security in Iraq.

Couric: But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 additional troops ... help the situation in Iraq?

Obama: Katie, as ... you've asked me three different times, and I have said repeatedly that there is no doubt that our troops helped to reduce violence. There's no doubt.

Couric: But yet you're saying ... given what you know now, you still wouldn't support it ... so I'm just trying to understand this.

Obama: Because ... it's pretty straightforward. By us putting $10 billion to $12 billion a month, $200 billion, that's money that could have gone into Afghanistan. Those additional troops could have gone into Afghanistan. That money also could have been used to shore up a declining economic situation in the United States. That money could have been applied to having a serious energy security plan so that we were reducing our demand on oil, which is helping to fund the insurgents in many countries. So those are all factors that would be taken into consideration in my decision-- to deal with a specific tactic or strategy inside of Iraq.

Couric: And I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying ... to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq would exist today without the surge?

Obama: Katie, I have no idea what would have happened had we applied my approach, which was to put more pressure on the Iraqis to arrive at a political reconciliation. So this is all hypotheticals ....

Senator Obama, let me answer your question as to "what would have happened" had your approach to Iraq been applied 18 months ago. Iraq would have been in total chaos, because American troops would not be there to reduce the violence by fighting the terrorists and insurgents. You wouldn't have had the photo op with smiling American soldiers. You wouldn't be touting how Maliqui "supports" your 18 months troop withdrawal deadline. Bottom line is that we would have lost the war in Iraq!! But of course, in the grand scheme of things, Obama and the Democrats want us to lose the war in Iraq. Because losing the war in Iraq is the best and only way Obama and the Democracts can articulate why they should be in the White House. Perhaps if Obama and the Democracts could just stop being so inartful ...

 

Last but not least, and totally unrelated to flip flopping, Obama said that Wesley Clark was being "inartful" when Clark dismissed John McCain's experience in Vietnam as being anything but relevant for someone running to be the commander-in-chief.

 

PS: I do give credit to Couric for actually asking tough questions during the interview, and not let her left bias get in the way of journalism for most of this interview. Let's see if she and CBS can keep it up.