Monday, July 2, 2007

Oh Boy, Obama



Reuters reports:

Sen. Barack Obama announced on Sunday he had raised $32.5 million for his presidential campaign in the past three months, the biggest quarterly fund-raising for any Democrat ever in a pre-election year.

The Illinois senator said more than 154,000 donors had contributed to his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in the April-June period, bringing his total donor list to more than 258,000.

Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York led all Democrats in the first quarter of the year with the former first lady edging out Obama, $26 million to $25 million. Only Republican President George W. Bush has raised more in the year before a presidential election.

Clinton, who leads Obama in national opinion polls, had not immediately released her figures but her campaign last week said she expected to raise $27 million to $28 million in the second quarter.


Now for the sophisticated political analysis: Wow.

And what to expect next: The Wrath of Hillary--that is, the Clinton campaign is going to ratchet up its anti-Obama operations. For the political operatives running HRC's campaign, money talks, and these fundraising numbers will--and should--scare them (no matter what they say in public). They will act accordingly.

Posted by David Corn at July 1, 2007 11:26 PM

7 comments:

capt said...

Mr. David Corn,

Wow is right. Now if only we can get ability, foresight, popularity, and efficacy measured in something other than dollars. To most people $32 million is still a sick amount of money.

Did you know there are only about 94,000 people on the planet with more than $30 million?

I have said it before, if we keep doing things politically in the same way we will keep getting the same results.

There has been very little talk about IF a new party takes the top seat will they reverse all of the secrecy or cloak their “new deal” in the old seal?

Without regard for any party - where is a viable candidate speaking about world peace? World poverty? World hunger? We are the "world power" and the best we can do is wage wars and spin reality to wage wars?

One billion people on the planet live on less than a dollar a day while in our generosity of spirit we spend four hundred billion to save an oil rich country from itself.

The amount of money we spend on election politics is obscene and is a confirmation of our obscene arrogance to the people that concern themselves with those things.

It is past time to recreate the character of our country. We are not a petty warlike hateful people. We are being misrepresented by those speaking in our name.


Thanks

Kirk

capt said...

Bush is Bluffing: The Farce of 'Executive Privilege'


When the White House invoked executive privilege, it wasn't invoking anything in the Constitution. Here's an attempt to clarify Bush's murky argument.


President Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to coin the phrase "executive privilege," but not the first to invoke its principle: namely, that a president has the right to withhold certain information from Congress, the courts or anyone else — even when faced with a subpoena. Executive privilege, though, is a murky and mysterious concept. Here, an attempt to clarify the murk.

Does the Constitution allow for executive privilege?

Nowhere does the Constitution mention the term or the concept of executive privilege. The belief that it does, the late legal historian Raoul Berger once said, is one of the greatest "constitutional myths."



More HERE

*****end of clip*****

As if the constitution matters these days.


capt

capt said...

Reflections from history

On Affairs in America

"My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success, nor suffer with honour, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of Majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say, you cannot conquer America.

"What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. - You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, still more extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter with every pitiful German Prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country:

Your efforts are forever vain and impotent-doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms-never-never-never.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (1708-78) On Affairs in America 1777.
http://www.bartleby.com/268/3/24.html

Thanks ICH Newsletter!

capt said...

The Attempted London Car Bombing: "Yuppie Terrorists" with a Mercedes [VIDEO]


In the estimation of counter-terrorism expert Larry Johnson, the car bomb of the would-be attack in London this past week would not do any real significant damage whatsoever. Yet the mainstream press seemed compelled to inflate this story as yet another example of the forever looming threat of another 9/11. The so-called terrorists were not located in the Middle East but were comfortably situated on the shores of the would-be attack, therefore completely discrediting the notion that we must fight in Iraq in order to prevent terrorism from occurring on our soil. Click on the video to your right for more.



More HERE

Mookie said...

Politics based on money necessarily removes a large subsection of the population from the entire process: those without it.

The first candidate that uses their fund-raising money for something worthwhile (like charity) gets my vote. Anything less would be disingenuous.

Anonymous said...

Obama's latest haul does not make him a more viable candidate.

Anonymous said...

David Corn is either being disingenous or extremely biased on this issue (or both?).

Recall the Obama 'attack" memos on Clinton -- to suggest that Clinton's people will go into full attack mode as though that tactic is reserved for the meanest people in politics is silliness. Obama's handlers have already proven that he plays hardball just like the politicians he pretends not to emulate. His so-called fresh face is a facade.