I keep coming back to Obama and this issue of accountability

[journalist3072]

In January of 2005, George W. Bush told the Washington Post "We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 election."

My point? We don't need another President who believes they are not accountable to the American people 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days of the year.

And thus far, Barack Obama has not been held accountable for anything in this campaign. In one of the previous debates, he gives virtually the same answer regarding drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants, that Sen. Clinton in another debate (and for which she was crucified for). The media gives Obama a free pass for his answer (again, the same one they crucified Sen. Clinton for).

It's also interesting that they have not held Obama accountable for the comments coming from his surrogates. Obama was the one who said he told Sen. Clinton that candidates set the tone for their campaign, and that any inappropriate comments coming from his team, wouldn't be tolerated.

So I ask, why hasn't Obama fired his adviser, Air Force Gen. Merrill "Tony" McPeak (Ret.), who said that Obama "doesn't go on television and have crying fits; he isn't discovering his voice at the age of 60."

Source: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/02/key-obama-advis.html

I'll give Obama credit for disavowing those comments, but IF (and that's a huge IF) he truly believes that he's responsible for the tone of his campaign, he would fire this person.

At some point, we must demand the same accountability from Obama, that has been asked of Sen. Clinton.

This is precisely why Obama is performing so well in the polls. I don't believe it is because Americans are falling in love with Obama's policies (if he even has any policies). It's because he's been painted by the MSM as the candidate who can't be asked the tough questions; who can't be held accountable.

Do we really want another four years of an unaccountable President?

[Occam Bandage]

1. That's because you're desperate to bring down Obama, and don't mind using ridiculous stretches.

[journalist3072]

3. Give me a break. I'm asking for someone who wants to be the leader of the free world, to be held

accountable.

And I see that, conveniently, you are not even addressing the issue of why Obama has not fired McPeak.

His comments reaked of sexism (the "crying fits") comment, AND ageism ("hasn't found his voice at age 60").

You do not want to deal with the fact that your candidate has been painted by the MSM as the Second Coming, and cannot be touched or held accountable.

Deal with the FACTS here.

[ugdude]

4. Lets hold Hillary accountable for her war in Iraq

She is reaponsible for 1 million deaths and a 5 trillion dollar deficit. Hows that accountability for ya?


BTW... Obama had the good wisdom to go against the war from the very beginning.

[journalist3072]

10. Wrong.....Again, let's look at the FACTS here, whether you want to or not

Specifically, let's take a look at July 2004, when Obama said he did not know how he would have voted, if he had been in the Senate during the IWR vote.

He said:

"I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports. What would I have done? I don’t know."

And then he said there was no difference between his position on the war, and Bush's, at that point:

"There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage."


Source: http://broadcatching.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/obama-no-difference-between-me-bush-on-iraq/

This is PRECISELY why President Bill Clinton was absolutely correct, when he said that this notion that Obama was the anti-war canidate, was a "fairytale."

[Occam Bandage]

18. I'd think a real journalist would have included the whole quote,

as well as the general context of the statement, in which he was trying to avoid calling Kerry and Edwards naive at their nomination convention. His basic point was:

1. I can't say for sure what I would have done in their shoes,
2. I know for sure that from where I was standing, it was not a good vote to make, and so I opposed their vote.

You only showed half that. Why? Because you're a hack.

[journalist3072]

21. Not a hack...and thank you for proving my point: Obama's decisions on Iraq have been POLITICAL

He and Michelle Obama have tried to paint him, as a person who doesn't change positions based on poll numbers, or chaning political winds or trends.

WRONG!

This is what he said:

"Now, Tim, that first quote was made with an interview with a guy named Tim Russert on MEET THE PRESS during the convention when we had a nominee for the presidency and a vice president, both of whom had voted for the war. And so it, it probably was the wrong time for me to be making a strong case against our party’s nominees’ decisions when it came to Iraq."


So he was doing exactly what he and Michelle has said he doesn't do.

[Occam Bandage]

23. Not a journalist, either.

And there's a strong difference between "changing positions" and "phrasing your position in a way that doesn't embarrass your nominee at their convention."

[journalist3072]

24. B.S.....What he was saying is that he was more concerened about John Kerry and John Edwards, than

our troops. He was more concerened with political expediency, then telling the truth.

Says a lot about him.

[Occam Bandage]

25. Yes. It says

that he has the politesse and the finesse to remain faithful to his positions while not self-marginalizing. Unlike Hillary, he can remain viable without selling out.

[ClericJohnPreston]

34. Nice rationalization

For someone with a brain, don't you see how cult-like your reasoning reflects?

[Occam Bandage]

36. Failure to adopt your kneejerk response is not indicative of cultism.

[loveangelc]

31. Ok, just what the hell does it say about your candidate that she VOTED for the war and wont admit

she was wrong under any circumstances? She has no room to even be IN a fight with John McCain or anyone about a war that she was supportive in. I find it incredible that you seem to want to overlook that when you nitpick every little thing Obama has ever said, when actually VOTING for the war has cost us thousands of lives.

[journalist3072]

32. Do you lie every day, or make special effort to do so on Sundays only?

Sen. Clinton has said ad nauseum that if she knew then what we know now, she would not have voted to give Bush authorization.

[Occam Bandage]

37. But yet she never said it was the wrong vote. She's always talked around it.

[loveangelc]

42. And you should know about lying since you support one.

Why won't she admit that the vote was a mistake? Answer for me that question. She will NOT under any circumstances say that she was WRONG. She says in retrospect she would vote differently, which is not taking responsibility for her vote. She tries to justify her vote by something about Osama and Hussein being competing meglomaniacs. She was asked again on MTV why it was so hard for her to just ADMIT that it was wrong, and she rambles on about something that was not a question. It's just typical behavior from her and she is no different than George Bush as far as I can see.

[rodeodance]

39. Poster is playing the WORM game--don't take the bait if at all possibe.

[rodeodance]

40. WORM= What Obama Really Meant.

[stillcool]

22. This might help with that..

WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune, Obama noted that once the war
began, "...There's not much of a difference between my position and George
Bush's position at this stage."

WHAT OBAMA SAID

"Obama, the U.S. Senate candidate from Illinois, said he believes the Bush administration has lost too much credibility in the world community to administer the policies necessary to stabilize Iraq.

On Iraq, on paper, there's not as much difference, I think, between the Bush administration and a Kerry administration as there would have been a year ago,' Obama said during a luncheon meeting with editors and reporters of Tribune newspapers. "There's not that much difference between my position and George Bush's position at this stage. The difference, in my mind, is who's in a position to execute.'

Stephanie Cutter, communications director for the Kerry campaign, did not dispute Obama's statement, but said the true comparison rests in the differences over the past two years. 'If you look on paper, has come our way, but he has come our way at a significant cost in terms of blood and treasure,' Cutter said Monday. 'Bush finally agreed to go to the
international community, but in voters' minds that doesn't change their opinion as to why we're at war or how the president mismanaged the war from day one.'

Obama, a state senator from Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, opposed the Iraq invasion before the war. But he now believes U.S. forces must remain to stabilize the war-ravaged nation--a policy not dissimilar to the current approach of the Bush administration.

The problem, Obama said, is the low regard for Bush in the international community. 'How do you stabilize a country that is made up of three different religious and in some cases ethnic groups, with minimal loss of life and minimum burden to the taxpayers?' Obama said. 'I am skeptical that the Bush administration, given baggage from the past three years, not just on Iraq. . . . I don't see them having the credibility to be able to execute. I mean, you have to have a new administration to execute what the Bush administration acknowledges has to happen.'"

WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR

BLITZER: "Had you been in the Senate when they had a vote on whether to give the president the authority to go to war, how would you have voted?"

OBAMA: "You know, I didn't have the information that was available to senators."

WHAT OBAMA SAID

BLITZER: Had you been in the Senate when they had a vote on whether to give the president the authority to go to war, how would you have voted?

OBAMA: You know, I didn't have the information that was available to senators. I know that, as somebody who was thinking about a U.S. Senate race, I think it was a mistake, and I think I would have voted no.

BLITZER: You would have voted no at the time?

OBAMA: That's correct.

BLITZER: Kerry, of course, and Edwards both voted yes.

OBAMA: But keep in mind, I think this is a tough question and a tough call.
What I do think is that if you're going to make these tough calls, you have to do so in a transparent way, in an honest way, talk to the American people, trust their judgment.

WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR

"I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports," Mr. Obama said. "What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made."

WHAT OBAMA SAID

"He opposed the war in Iraq, and spoke against it during a rally in Chicago in the fall of 2002. He said then that he saw no evidence that Iraq had unconventional weapons that posed a threat, or of any link between SaddamHussein and Al Qaeda.

"In a recent interview, he declined to criticize Senators Kerry and Edwards for voting to authorize the war, although he said he would not have done the same based on the information he had at the time.

"'But, I'm not privy to Senate intelligence reports,' Mr. Obama said. 'What would I have done? I don't know. What I know is that from my vantage point the case was not made.'

"But Mr. Obama said he did fault Democratic leaders for failing to ask enough tough questions of the Bush administration to force it to prove its case for war. 'What I don't think was appropriate was the degree to which Congress gave the president a pass on this,' he said." 7/26/2004]

WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR

Asked by NPR about John Kerry and John Edwards voting for the war, Obama said: "I think that there is room for disagreement in that initial decision."

WHAT OBAMA SAID

BLOCK: I've read about a speech you gave in the fall of 2002. It had to dowith the looming war in Iraq.

Sen. OBAMA: Right.

BLOCK: It made quite a splash. Can you tell me about that?

Sen. OBAMA: I delivered a speech to a couple of thousand people at a anti-war rally in Chicago. And I said, `It's not that I'm opposed to all wars. It's just that I think this is not the right war to fight.' I don't consider that to have been an easy decision, and certainly, I wasn't in the
position to actually cast a vote on it. But what I do think is that we need a foreign policy that is less ideologically driven and pays more attention to facts on the ground.

BLOCK: This ticket, obviously, John Kerry and John Edwards, both senatorsvoted for the war.

Sen. OBAMA: Yeah. Well--and I think that there is room for disagreement in that initial decision. Where I think we have to be unified is to recognize that we've got an enormous task ahead in actually making Iraq work. And that is going to take the kind of international cooperation that I think the Bush
administration has shown difficulty pulling off, and I think that the Kerry-Edwards campaign is going to be better prepared to do.

WHAT YOU MIGHT HEAR

In "Audacity," Obama allowed that he was: "sympathetic to the pressures Democrats were under" (p. 293), adding: "I didn't consider the case againstwar to be cut-and- dried." (p. 294)

WHAT OBAMA SAID

"And on October 11, 2002, twenty-eight of the Senate's fifty Democrats joined all but one Republican in handing to Bush the power he wanted.

I was disappointed in that vote, although sympathetic to the pressuresDemocrats were under. I had felt some of those same pressures myself. By the fall of 2002, I had already decided to run for the U.S. Senate and knew that possible war with Iraq would loom large in any campaign. When a group of Chicago activists asked if I would speak at a large antiwar rally planned for October, a number of my friends warned me against taking so public a position on such a volatile issue. Not only was the idea of an invasion increasingly popular, but on the merits I didn't consider the case against war to be cut-and-dried. Like most analysts, I assumed that Saddam had
chemical and biological weapons and coveted nuclear arms. I believed that he had repeatedly flouted UN resolutions and weapons inspectors and that such behavior had to have consequences. That Saddam butchered his own people was
undisputed; I had no doubt that the world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

What I sensed, though, was that the threat Saddam posed was not imminent, the Administration's rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven, and the war in Afghanistan was far from complete. And I was certain that by choosing precipitous, unilateral military action over the hard slog of diplomacy, coercive inspections, and smart sanctions, America was missing
an opportunity to build a broad base of support for its policies.

In addition, the Obama campaign has posted the jeff Berkowitz interview where he clearly states he would have voted no on the AWR.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/i raq/

[Occam Bandage]

8. I'd think a journalist would be better at spelling and mechanics.

[sniffa]

6. You don't say

;)

[rodeodance]

38. Thank you for you post. The media has given obama essentially a free pass.

Thank you for you post. The media has given obama essentially a free pass.

[AX10]

2. The msm is setting him up for the fall.

They want an untested quantity to be our nominee. The kid gloves that he has been handled with will disappear once he gets the nomination. He is not a Republican, so his preferencial treatment
will last.

[journalist3072]

5. Yep....Here's my theory...

Some in the MSM say that the Republican Party is afraid of Obama; that they would rather run against Clinton that Obama.

I believe the exact opposite to be the case.

If the Republican Party and their MSM really wanted to run against Sen. Clinton, they would not constantly be trashing her and painting her and Bill Clinton as these race-baiting, MLK-hating figures. They wouldn't be painting Obama as the Second Coming, can-do-no-wrong person.

I think the Republican Party (and again, their friends in the MSM) are afraid of running against Sen. Clinton.

[REDFISHBLUEFISH]

11. Republicans will not "discover" Obama's negatives until they have too.

Rezco, Drugs, Record, inexperience and of course his anti-gay friend and slightly radical church connections..

Repub's know they have a gold mine and FRESH DIRT beats old Lewinsky stuff.

[AX10]

14. It should be very obvious to some.

But it is not.
No one I know of has been as vetted as HRC and BC.
Under Obama there is a fresh pile of dirt to be dug up.
The MSM is afraid of the Hillary machine. They like Obama because he is all to accomodating
to the opposition. Strange how there was no talk of accomodation when Bush took power in 2001.

[REDFISHBLUEFISH]

27. Republicans will have a field day with Rezko's trial.

It will be 24/7 talk radio if Obama gets nominated.

Fresh dirt is always better!

Obama's stuff is newer.

[neutron]

35. What about his selling out his constituents on safety

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?em&ex=1202101200&en=f2853a7f59384438&ei=5087%0A

[LowerManhattanite]

7. Sominex..

z-z-z-z-z-z.....

[maximusveritas]

9. Where is Hillary's accountability on the Iraq War?

She continues to deny any responsibility for her mistake in giving President Bush the authority to go to war.
She's even tried to lie about what that legislation's purpose was and downplay its importance.

I care more about that than Obama taking accountability for the "tone of his campaign".

[BootinUp]

13. She is taking responsibility

for her decision, you want her to take responsibility for dubya's decision, and that is patently unfair.

[REDFISHBLUEFISH]

15. Iraq war was in the debate, was Obama record? Present, Wrong button, I voted with Cheney!

LOL!

[journalist3072]

17. Exactly. This notion that Sen. Clinton hasn't been held accountable or asked about her IWR vote,

is just ridiculous. She's been asked about it ad nauseum, and has explained her vote.

Obama has NOT been held accountable for his record.

[Occam Bandage]

19. But yet she's never said it was the wrong vote. No accountability.

[rodeodance]

41. She has given you a reasoned explanation. You obviously disagree. But you can not

she has not been held accountable just because you choose not to agree with her response on this issue.

When reporters/media do not question Obama on his response (does not matter if i agree or not-that is not the issue)--then he is not being held accountable.

[xchrom]

12. recommend

[NC_Nurse]

16. You think Hillary is accountable?

Come ON! She is the queen of hedging her bets.

She hasn't gotten rid of her most inappropriate surrogate - her husband.
Or any of her other mud flingers like the guy from BET,or Mark Penn.

Please. The reason she got so much crap for the drivers license thing was because she gave a ridiculously
evasive answer on it in the debate AND when it was clear that it was unpopular - she changed her position.

They will all evade on an unpopular position. It's called politics.

[blm]

20. Bull. NONE of you ask for BCCI books to be opened because JACKSON STEPHENS staked

Bill Clinton's political career in Arkansas and brought BCCI into this country.

What happened to the BCCI report's outstanding matters that required further investigation of named figures like Jackson Stephens, Marc Rich, AQ Khan, James Bath, Asnan Kasshoggi, various Dubai and Saudi royals and BushInc operatives?

What happened to that report handed to Bill Clinton when he took office, that should have put all of BushInc in jail by the end of 1994 instead of Dems handing over congress and Bush2 planning the return to WH in 2000.

What did Bill DO?

[chimpymustgo]

28. The same thing Obama will do. NOTHING. Please tell me if you think differently.

nt

[blm]

33. He has s tronger open government foundation than Clintons who have a HEAVY record

in support of CLOSED GOVERNMENT.

You are welcome to vote for more closed government that continues to protect BushInc if that is your prefernce.

I will not. I will support the best opportunity Democrats have left to open government to the people.

[zulchzulu]

26. When you wrote "Barack Obama has not been held accountable for anything in this campaign"...

... I knew you were full of shit.

What garbage.

[journalist3072]

29. I see you offer no proof of anything he has been held accountable for. You're the one who is

full of shit, if you can't offer any proof.

Don't write checks your ass can't cash.

[Honeycombe8]

30. You are lying about the debate answers re drivers' licenses.

I watched all the debates, except for 3. I saw the debates re the drivers' license answers, esp. the one where Clinton screwed up her answer.

Never....at any time....did Obama or any other candidate give the answer that Clinton gave that first time. She, in essence, refused to answer the question, EVEN THOUGH THE ISSUE WAS DECIDED IN HER HOME STATE OF NEW YORK. It was evident that she held a position, and had voiced a position, but that she was refusing to voice that position again or to state an opposing view. THAT was the problem with her answer.

The next debate, Obama was asked a similar question. It was not the same question, but it was similar. He gave a muddled answer, but it was not an out and out avoidance of the question. Plus, HE HAD NEVER VOICED A CLEAR ANSWER TO THE QUESTION BEFORE, as Hillary had done. Plus, IT WAS NOT AN ISSUE THAT WAS DECIDED IN HIS HOME STATE BY A FRIEND GOVERNOR OF HIS, which would tend to indicate that a senator of that state would, of course, have a definite view.

Finally, if he was given a "free pass," it was the media, and not he that did it.

Trash posts like this are one of the reasons that I have decided to vote against Hillary Clinton each and every time I am given that chance.