http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007 12/grading_the_candidates_on_paki.html

Democrats Receiving an "A"

Like McCain, Hillary Clinton highlighted her personal relationship with Bhutto and appeared "presidential" in her response. Her call for an investigation played well with Democrats.

Joe Biden has been stressing the problems in Pakistan for weeks and spoke intelligently about the consequences.

Democrats receiving a "B"

Bill Richardson has also been touting the unrest in Pakistan recently but sounded a little off key calling for Musharraf to step down.

Democrats receiving a "C"

Senator Obama sounded the right notes of regret and warning of the danger but then inexplicably tried to tie the assassination to Clinton's vote authorizing force against Iraq - something he was ridiculed for by some. Not a death blow to his campaign but it once again plays to Hillary's theme of experience.

John Edwards spoke well initially and then pulled the grandstanding stunt of calling Musharraf urging him not to crackdown. Why Musharraf took the call is a mystery and Edwards making it in the first place did not sit well with the White House and could be seen as injecting partisan politics into a dangerous situation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2007/12/28/AR2007122802445. html

The Pakistan Test
Some presidential candidates show they can respond quickly to a foreign policy crisis. Some flunk or foul.

THE ASSASSINATION of Benazir Bhutto presented U.S. presidential candidates with a test: Could they respond cogently and clearly to a sudden foreign policy crisis? Within hours some revealing results were in. One candidate, Democrat John Edwards, passed with flying colors. Another, Republican Mike Huckabee, flunked abysmally. Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain were serious and substantive. And Barack Obama -- the Democratic candidate who claims to represent a new, more elevated brand of politics -- committed an ugly foul.

Ms. Clinton and Mr. McCain also endorsed Pakistan's continued democratization. Each cited an acquaintance with Ms. Bhutto or Mr. Musharraf and opportunistically trumpeted their foreign policy experience -- but both also offered some cogent analysis. Ms. Clinton rightly cited "the failure of the Musharraf regime either to deal with terrorism or to build democracy," adding that "it's time that the United States sided with civil society in Pakistan."

Mr. Obama similarly began by offering bland condolences to Pakistanis and noting that "I've been saying for some time that we've got a very big problem there."
Then Mr. Obama committed his foul -- a far-fetched attempt to connect the killing of Ms. Bhutto with Ms. Clinton's vote on the war in Iraq. After the candidate made the debatable assertion that the Iraq invasion strengthened al-Qaeda in Pakistan, his spokesman, David Axelrod, said Ms. Clinton "was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which we would submit was one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and al-Qaeda, who may have been players in the event today."
When questioned later about his spokesman's remarks, Mr. Obama stiffly defended them -- while still failing to offer any substantive response to the ongoing crisis. Is this Mr. Obama's way of rejecting "the same Washington game" he lambasted earlier in the day? If so, his game doesn't look very new, or attractive.

http://campaignspot.nationalreview.com/p ost?q=YWE0OWZkZGMzMjJmOWY3MTU1YWE4YTA1M 2QxZDkzMzg

Team Obama Tussles With Team Hillary Over Bhutto

Evidence that Team Obama is losing their cool

If the U.S. had not invaded Iraq, Benazir Bhutto would be alive today? Please.

The threat of militant Islamist extremism in Pakistan predates the Iraq war by more than a decade; Axelrod ought to take in a screening of "Charlie Wilson's War." The threat grew, and developed, and incubated, independent of U.S. policy for decades. It is naive folly to believe that if the U.S. had just had the right foreign policy, we could prevent some extremist from conducting an assassination.

To the best of our knowledge, the U.S. has not taken military action in Pakistan, beyond the rare hellfire missile launched from an unmanned drone. It's not like our forces in Iraq would be fighting al-Qaeda in Pakistan if the U.S. had not invaded Iraq. (Right? Or would President Obama have announced the invasion of Pakistan in 2003?) We don't know the exact who and how and where on this asssassination plot, but the trail has yet to lead outside of Pakistan. I have yet to see any compelling evidence that there is anything the U.S. could have done to prevent this.

I find it odd to be out defending Hillary Clinton like this, but the Obama camp has deployed a desperate flailing argument that suggests they have absolutely no familiarity with threats from within Pakistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/us/pol itics/29memo.html

For the presidential candidates, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has emerged as a ghoulish sort of test: a chance to project leadership and competence -- or not -- on a fast-moving and nuanced foreign policy issue.

Senators John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, spent the day asserting their own personal expertise: their private conversations with Ms. Bhutto and Mr. Musharraf, their visits to Pakistan and their concerns about fallout affecting the nation's nuclear arsenal to the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

While there were some stabs at substance -- Mrs. Clinton called for an independent investigation into Ms. Bhutto's death, and Mr. Richardson called for cutting off all aid to Pakistan -- most of the candidates concentrated on projecting the aura of a steady hand in a crisis.

Senator Barack Obama tried to sound like both a leader and a candidate on Pakistan on Friday. At one point, he said he would suspend some military aid to Pakistan if the government did not hold free elections and clamp down on terrorist groups. At another point, though, he suggested that the war in Iraq -- which his rivals Mrs. Clinton, John Edwards and others had voted for -- had "resulted in us taking our eye off the ball" in pursuing Al Qaeda and bringing stability to the region.

There's more...

Unlike their treatment of Hillary, the media is pretty much silent on this story.  Congrats to all Obama supporters: The media loves your candidate and will probably ignore this mini-scandal.  

As Ben Smith of Politico ponders:

"Only ABC News seems to have written it up, and (questioning my own news judgment here) I wonder if Hillary would have gotten away so lightly."

No, Ben. She wouldn't. And she didn't.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/ 2007/12/obamas-friendly.html

In Estherville, IA, Obama calls on 18-year-old student Jim Mohler.  

"The question was very similar to an anecdote which Obama regularly recites on the campaign trail.

'At a town hall in Independence, Iowa, on Sunday, just one day prior to Mohler's question, Obama told the crowd, "Everyone who make $97,000 a year or less, you are paying payroll tax on 100% of your income, now my friend, Warren Buffet, he made $46 million last year, he had an off year," before elaborating on how he intends to lift the cap on Social Security.'"

Mohler asks Obama:

"Right now, as I understand it, the tax limit is $97,000 which means like the most anyone can pay on taxes is what they would pay on $97,000, but yet we have people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates that are making billions upon billions of dollars and are still paying taxes on $97,000 is anyway we can make them pay taxes on what they're making?"

After he had responded to the question, Obama comments, "Good question."

Upon questioning by the press, Mohler admits he is a supporter and a volunteer for the Obama campaign.  In fact, on the same night he asked the question, he was also working the event.  He had a Obama press badge and sticker on his jacket.

John Edwards created a website to mock Hillary's plant misstep.  Will he give Obama the same treatment?  Or will he, like the media, ignore anything that might be construed as negative about Obama's character?

I think we all know the answer to that question.

To quote MA_Blue from Taylor's blog comment section:

Remember the fake FEMA press conference? It was about FEMA employees asking question to the FEMA spokesperson. The guy who orchestrated that was fired. The Obama volunteer was a plant but Obama didn't know and that was also the case with Hillary. I think it's a bunch nitwits who think they are helping their candidates, only in the case of HRC, it was turn into a capital crime.

There's more...

Paul Krugman has another very interesting column on Barack Obama and his tepid plan for Universal Healthcare.

In summary, Krugman charges that Obama is using Right-Wing talking points to attack healthcare plans proposed by Hillary and Edwards.  In doing so, Obama has placed himself in a very difficult situation when, as President, Obama comes to the realization that for it to be universal, the healthcare plan must be mandatory.  

Mr. Obama has been stressing his differences with his rivals by attacking their plans from the right -- which means that he has been giving credence to false talking points that will be used against any Democratic health care plan a couple of years from now.

But Mr. Obama knows that if he tries to include a mandate in the plan, he'll face a barrage of misleading attacks from conservatives who oppose universal health care in any form. And he'll have trouble responding -- because he made the very same misleading attacks on Hillary Clinton and John Edwards during the race for the Democratic nomination.

Essentially, Krugman argues that Candidate Obama is handicapping President Obama's healthcare options.  Candidate Obama, in his fierce opposition to Hillary's and Edwards' mandates, went so far as to say their plans would "criminalize" poor people who can't afford it.  

Unfortunately for Obama, Krugman cites to two examples that debunks the myth that mandates are unenforceable and many poor Americans will be unable to afford the insurance.

On the enforceability of mandates:

[S]ome states have managed to get the number of uninsured drivers down to as little as 2 percent. Besides, while the enforcement of car insurance mandates isn't perfect, it does greatly increase the number of insured drivers.

Anyway, why talk about car insurance rather than looking at direct evidence on how health care mandates perform? Other countries -- notably Switzerland and the Netherlands -- already have such mandates. And guess what? They work.

On affordability of poor Americans:

all the Democratic plans include subsidies to lower-income families to help them pay for insurance, plus a promise to increase the subsidies if they prove insufficient.

In fact, the Edwards and Clinton plans contain more money for such subsidies than the Obama plan. If low-income families find insurance unaffordable under these plans, they'll find it even less affordable under the Obama plan.

In closing, Krugman argues that perhaps universal healthcare really isn't all that important to Obama.  Perhaps, running on the Democratic ticket, it was something Candidate Obama had to propose, not out of desire or passion, but perhaps, necessity.

I'd add, however, a further concern: the debate over mandates has reinforced the uncomfortable sense among some health reformers that Mr. Obama just isn't that serious about achieving universal care -- that he introduced a plan because he had to...

Krugman's last sentence is particularly striking. Obama's rhetoric is firework.  He rouses the audience with the wow factor.  The audience is mesmerized by his talk of hope, change and unity; yet, when given the opportunity to put the muscles behind the rhetoric, Obama is often MIA.

[E]very time there's a hard choice to be made he comes down on the side of doing less.

We have seen this with Obama's Senatorial (and state) record: Iraq war, the Iranian vote, abortion issues, gun-control, the S-Chip, the MoveOn condemnation, and health care. When an issue is divisive, Obama has a pattern of skipping the votes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/opinio n/07krugman.html?ref=opinion

There's more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/us/pol itics/21edwards.html?pagewanted=1&_r =1&ref=politics

If you there's anything to get out of this article dissecting the relationship between Kerry and Edwards, it reveals the side of Edwards that many of his supporters refuse to acknowledge:  shrewd, calculating and opportunistic at the expense of the Democratic Party.

Although Edwards accepted a hesitant Kerry's  offer to be his running mate, he never wanted to play the role of Vice-Presidential candidate.  He wanted to call his own shot, run a campaign within a campaign.  Kerry be damned.

[Kerry] want[ed]to give the American people something more tangible... one intended as the ticket's new slogan: "Help is on the way."

But Mr. Edwards did not want to say it.  

So the running mates set off across the country together with different messages, sometimes delivered at the same rally: Mr. Kerry leading the crowd in chants for "help," Mr. Edwards for "hope." The campaign printed two sets of signs. By November, the disagreement had been so institutionalized that campaign workers handed out fans with both messages, on flip sides.

To the end of their disappointing run, the two men were unable to agree on the script, whether for slogans or more substantive matters. And like so many political marriages, the one between Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards -- Senate colleagues who became rivals then running mates but never really friends -- ended in recrimination and regrets.

"We were constantly negotiating backwards," said Marcus Jadotte, a Kerry deputy campaign manager who was assigned to travel with Mr. Edwards. "He refused to get to a place where they were truly in concert."

As the 2004 campaign started to heat up, Edwards refused to play the attack dog... even as the attacks from the Right heated up:

[T]he convention was barely over when the attacks began, starting with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth accusing Mr. Kerry of lying about his military record. Kerry aides complained that Mr. Edwards would resist or try to tone down language when they asked him to deliver negative lines -- "pundit lines," as one of Mr. Edwards's aides scoffed.

[Edwards] objected to anything more than the most generic attacks on the Bush administration. After weeks of battering by the Swift boat group, he called only for the president to "stop these ads."

On the issue of how to approach Iraq, it was Edwards who convinced Kerry to not denounced the war, despite the latter's growing doubt:

In 2004, [Kerry/Edwards] found themselves in an impossible position: antiwar Democrats were pushing Mr. Kerry to say he would pull out troops....

Mr. Kerry had increasing doubts about the war. But Mr. Edwards argued that they should not renounce their votes -- they had to show conviction and consistency.

Mr. Kerry yielded to his running mate after Mr. Bush issued a challenge in early August: would Mr. Kerry still vote the same way, knowing now that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction? Mr. Kerry told reporters he would have voted the same, but done everything else about the war differently.

In the years since the 2004 loss, campaign advisors pondered whether Edwards "was trying to protect his reputation so he could run for president again."

Mr. Edwards told Terry McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, that he had wanted to "go after Bush.""Terry, they wouldn't let me," he said, according to Mr. McAuliffe's book, "What a Party!"

Mr. Kerry declined to comment for this article. A spokesman said he had no interest in relitigating the 2004 race. But he told Mr. McAuliffe that he could not get Mr. Edwards to fight.

Edwards as Presidential candidate proves to be just as shrewd and calculating:

Having seen up close the perils of seeming to shift with the wind, he is selling himself as the candidate of "conviction" and "bold ideas" and trying to portray the front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as tacking for political gain... And he has courted his party's left wing by renouncing his vote on the war, something he counseled Mr. Kerry not to do.

As Kerry conceded the race, "Edwards was aiming for 2008 and embarking on what one campaign aide called the 'it wasn't my fault tour' around his home state to distance himself from the loss.

There's more...

It's not enough to say, "I will vote for Hillary!" You must be able to articulate why you support a candidate to those who are less than committed.  If you ask me why I like Hillary, my first thoughts would be: because I just do.  I have always admired her.  

Of course, that isn't going to sell.  It won't even spark interest.  This diary will attempt to give you an understanding as to why I am a fierce supporter and admirer of Hillary Clinton since I was a teenager.

I have always been a political/news junkie.  I wasn't a Democrat or a Republican, the distinction between the two was beyond my adolescent interest.  I just liked politics.  

In 1998, I was selected to deliver the commencement speech at my graduation.  For weeks, I searched unsuccessfully for words of inspiration that spoke to my class and my generation.  

Like all teenagers, I thought we were trailblazers; that we would go forth and change history.  The egocentrism of youth.

About two weeks before the commencement, I came across a PBS documentary called, "Hillary's Class." I knew Hillary was the First Lady and I knew she was no Barbara Bush.  She was a modern First Lady... ambitious, independent and successful in her own right.  She was, essentially, the `90s version of Eleanor Roosevelt - my favorite First Lady, bar none.

The documentary told the tales of the women of Wellesley, Class of 1969.  Hillary and her classmates were sent to Wellesley not to prepare them for political or corporate aspirations, but to find a good Harvard man to settle down with.  It would be, as their parents desired, a finishing school of sorts.  

At Wellesley, Hillary distinguished herself amongst her peers.  So much so, they selected her to deliver the commencement speech.  It was to be a speech that put her on the pages of the New York Times at the tender age of 22.

In her impromptu speech, Hillary urged her classmates to defy limitations and pursue that which is beyond one's reach.  No apologies.  No explanations.  

"As the French students wrote on the wall of the Sorbonne," she said, `Demand the impossible, we will settle for nothing less.''  

I had finally found a quote that truly inspired me - even to this day!  I marinated over that quote for a few days before finally sitting down and writing my own commencement speech.  In doing so, I incorporated that quote into the speech.  But my speech paled in comparison to Hillary's.

In 1998, women were already succeeding outside the home.  There was no two-front, unending wars.  There was no omnipresent threat of terrorism or 46 million uninsured Americans.    What was I raging against?  The computer age rendering the typewriter obsolete? Or perhaps, email eclipsing snail mail?

Hillary and her generation are true trailblazers.  They defied social conventions of the day.  Upon graduation, Hillary and her classmates pursued careers and ambitions beyond what their mothers and grandmothers could have ever envision women could pursue.
They made it effortless for my generation to pursue our goals and dreams.    

The fire that Hillary lit in 1969 never burn out.  In her adult life, she kept pushing the boundaries.  First female partner at the law firm; first female to sit on the board of a major corporation.  Hillary was the first First Lady to hold a post-graduate degree.  First woman to be elected statewide in New York, and the first First Lady elected to the Senate.

She was `demanding the impossible,' and settling for nothing less.

For all her professional successes, Hillary never turned her back on women, children and those who are less fortunate.  She advocated for families and children.  She brought to the national stage universal healthcare.  

Hillary is not a static, one-dimensional woman.  She's certainly not the caricature that the GOP have portrayed her as for the last 16 years.  Hillary is complicated, yet dynamic.  She is a woman with conviction and, as she stated today, a woman `driven by passion.'  Hillary has also shown that she learned from past failures.  She often says, "you can't be a leader if no one is following you."

She's been able to work alongside the same Republicans who voted to impeach her husband.  In her pursuit to get the job done, she's pursued bipartisanship in the Senate and pledged to pursue that as President.  

She doesn't need to say how progressive she is.  She not only has the Senatorial record to prove it, she is the living embodiment of what it means to be progressive.

Hillary's mantra is, "Ultimately, to bring change, you have to know when to stand your ground, and when to find common ground.  You need to know when to stick to principles and fight, and know when to make principled compromises."

And that is why I support Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for President.

FYI -- YouTube clips of PBS Frontline "Hillary's Class":
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWKveFKc8 2s
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2HbIs9Ev AA

There's more...

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs .dll/article?AID=20071107/NEWS08/311070 071-1/news20

"NEWMARKET - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said he's a better choice than primary rival Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., to battle special interests blocking reform on health care, climate change and other issues.

Edwards said it takes a fighter like himself, rather than a self-described unifier like Obama to break the logjam on Capitol Hill where lobbyists write the laws or block passage of meaningful change."

I suppose this is what Edwards and Obama wanted all along.  Knock off Hillary so the fight will be just between the two of them.  

Edwards thinks he'll do a better job of turning the country around.  That he's a fighter and Obama is just Obama... all talk and charm.

Interesting Senator.  

There's more...

He's says it's too burdensome on the industry. Environmental groups, some of which have endorsed him, have pushed for the bill.

President Bush has threatened to veto the reform bill.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071107/ap_o n_el_pr/obama_mining_1;_ylt=AtlgWdWrNB6G jtuZsP8bsPTkbeRF

"RENO, Nev. - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama opposes a federal mining reform bill because he says it would be too burdensome on the industry and could end up costing miners jobs in Nevada and other states."

I thought in the wake of recent mining accidents, no one would be opposed to having a bill that would protect miners' safety.

I'm baffled by Obama's opposition.

There's more...

How does this woman do it?  To jump from state to state and stump speeches to stump speeches, yet still have time to do her Senatorial business?  She was in MA, then NH, and back to D.C. for the hearing.

The environment... an issue nearest and dearest to my heart:

Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, and Barbara Boxer held a contentious hearing to shut down Yucca Mountain dump site.  Environmentalists have been fighting to close Yucca Mountain for about 30 years.

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7293434

"Senator Hillary Clinton was one of the harshest voices. She grilled nuclear experts over what she sees as a shoddy process. Nevada Senator John Ensign broke from the party line though to blast the Bush administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy.

'What we should not do is push an incomplete application for a flawed site through a rushed site and an incoherent process,'" said Sen. Clinton.

It is possible that the site will be shut down within a year.

However, the Democrat's push will likely face an uphill battle from Bush, the GOP Senate and many states that are invested in nuclear plants.

There's more...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071026/ap_on_el_pr/edwards_student_journalist_4;_ylt=ArEjZ6SCPnKDFKdjv_QqrfXkbeRF

Summary:  University of North Carolina student, Carla Babb, did a story in which she posed the argument of whether someone who is running on a populist platform should hold his operation in a less affluent part of North Carolina; rather than up-scale Chapel Hill.  She interviewed two students: one from Edwards campaign and one unaffilliated.  The story was put on YouTube where it received little or no attention... until, that is, Edwareds campaign sought to stifle the story.  The campaign charged that Babbs did not disclose the angle of the story prior to asking for an interview with one of the campaign's interns.

This is just not a very good campaign move.  Like the criticism the Clinton campaign received for squashing the GQ story, Edwards should be equally admonished.

What was the campaign thinking?  How many people would have even noticed this story?  Edwards campaign has turned this into a national story.

For what?  Because the student thinks that Edwards should have held his campaign operation in a less posh part of North Carolina?

I'm not even sure I agree with the student reporter's premise.  Actually, I would have dismissed it.

Yet, the Edwards campaign got hold of it and called Babbs:

Babb said: "I was completely shocked to get a phone call from the Edwards campaign saying that the story was straight from the Republican Party and that we needed to take it down."

C.A. Taggle, a professor at UNC, also stated that the campaign "warned that relations with the school could be jeopardized."

Bringing attention to a story that was of no consequence to anyone outside the UNC community.

There's more...

On Monday's 'CBS Early Show,' Senator Barack Obama was asked to address Hillary Clinton's commanding lead in both the national polls and the recent New Hampshire poll.  Obama told 'Early Show' host, Harry Smith, that he didn't believe in polls.  To illustrate that point, he managed to not only take a swipe at Hillary Clinton's 2003 Iraq War Resolution vote, but to imply she is a slave to polls.

"If I believed in polls, then five years ago, I would have backed the war in Iraq like she did, because, you know, George Bush was very popular, and the war in Iraq was perceived as the smart political play."

Interesting.  Barack Obama does not believe polls matter; it's all much ado about nothing anyways, right?

In late September 2007, a new poll from Newsweek found that Obama was leading Clinton 28% to 24% among likely Iowa caucus-goers. It made headlines because for months, Clinton, Obama and Edwards had been jostling for the lead.

The Obama campaign did not waste any time in mass emailing their supporters of this latest poll development.

As Politico.com reports:
"Barack Obama's presidential campaign has been telling people not to pay too much attention to the polls lately, but now they're emailing all their supporters with news of the latest survey."

"(W)hile the pundits focus on meaningless national polls," says Plouffe's email, "we are leading in the one state where the electorate is most focused on this election and where they are getting the most exposure to Barack."
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/09/obama_climbs_in_iowa_poll.html/

Hmmm....

There's more...