BHO was quick to denounce Farrakhan, he had also done so on the record before the debate.  

What about when HRC had listened politely in the West Bank city of Ramallah as Suha Arafat unleashed a torrent of accusations against Israel?

"It is important to point out here the severe damage caused by the intensive daily use of poison gas by Israeli forces in the past years that has led to an increase in cancer cases against Palestinian women and children," Mrs Arafat said.

She added that 80% of water resources were contaminated, and that the ground was full of chemicals banned internationally.

HRC did nothing at the time of the comments.  Then the next day she still didn't "denounce" the comments.

Mrs Clinton was responding to accusations by Suha Arafat that Israel had contaminated Palestinian areas with poison gas.

"Everyone who supports this (peace) effort should refrain from inflammatory rhetoric and from baseless accusations... that could in any way adversely affect what the parties are attempting to achieve,"

Now more than eight years later I demand that HRC must unequivocally and specifically denounce and reject Mrs. Arafat, or else we'll have proof that she hates Israel.

Running against a war hero?  Hrm, who else did that?  Bill Clinton in 1992, Bill Clinton in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000 against John McCain, George W. Bush against John Kerry in 2004...

I thought that might be true myself.  Then came the primaries and the caucuses and Obama has impressed me for what he says and how he has campaigned and also because he has been so darn successful, including in very, very white states.

I live in the whitest state in the country, a purple state with two Republican Senators.  Obama brought people to the caucuses who had never before participated and he won 59% of the vote against the establishment-backed former First Lady.

You may end up being right about Obama vs. McCain. Personally, after what I have witnessed, I just don't think so.

McCain has all sorts of problems as a candidate that people who make your argument never acknowledge.  Being a war hero is far less of a draw than you think.  Being someone who wants to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran, stay in Iraq for 100 years, and get support from an anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish bigot whose views he has not rejected or denounced are just some of his weaknesses.  He has plenty of his own questions to answer and I haven't seen him do that with the rapidity and grace and focus as Obama has when it comes to the Clinton attacks.

I hope you end up on the Democratic team in this election.  Whoever is the nominee, I'll be there.

By the way, can you tell me how much foreign policy experience William Jefferson Clinton had when he became President?  I thought he did well enough.  So does most of the country, including Hillary.  People like you give HRC supporters a bad name.

Great round up of lack of investigation.

This diary is Stellar!

..see your Rezko(raised what, less than $100,000?), and raise you Hsu(over a million).  There have been a lot who have looked into this, and none have had any reason or legitimacy to say that wrong doing on Obama's part has occurred.  Let the trial begin.

No one said that the Republicans will ignore these issues.  

But Obama supporters, myself among them, think these issues will be answered to Americans' satisfaction, in the context of a full discussion of McCain's policies, endorsers, history of links to lobbyists, etc.

#1:  It is true, Barack Obama has never held a sub-committee hearing on Europe.  He became chairman almost exactly when he launched his official campaign for the Presidency.  He hasn't used it to boost his credentials.  The basic idea is that he'll do a lot more good in the White House than he will holding a bunch of sub-committee hearings(which tend to do little).  Of course, Hillary wishes he held meetings and didn't campaign so much.

His committee had jurisdiction over Afghanistan. We are at war in Afghanistan. That's two years of war where it was more important to be running for president that doing the nations business. If that was his decision why didn't he had over the chairmanship to someone else?

#2:   When he opposed the war, he opposed it before it was launched.  Once we went in and broke the country, we had an obligation to try and fix it.

Obama never voted against the war. He spoke about it in 2002 and since becoming a Senator he has voted almost exactly the same as Clinton. He said in 2004 that if he had been a Senator in 2002 he may have voted for the war. In my opinion, his Senate record does not give confidence that he would have stood against the war in 2002 as a Senator and taken the political heat that those who did received.

#3:   The Obama campaign and the Canadian embassy have denied the report from CTV.  They have given answers, just not the one that the Hillary campaign wants to hear.

NO. The campaign has refused to answer whether Goolsbee met with Rioux, and what the subject of that conversation was. There are other questions. Here is a list Ohio Labor Leaders Call on Senator Obama to Come Clean on NAFTA

#4:   All records have been released.  Obama has released all of his financial information, including his tax returns and Senate ear-marks.  The property in question consisted of a house and a lot at a pretty good price.  However, the owner wanted to sell both, and Obama wanted the house.  He had no use for the lot, so he went and found someone to buy the lot(or they found him, not too sure).  This issue has been investigated fully and there's no one who suggests that in this incident, there was any wrong doing by Obama.

Did Obama know where Rezko was getting the money? Did he get any money from Rezko? Did he know anything about Auchi's invovlement? Was he concerned about where the money was coming from? As a potential candidate for office did he think he had a higher burden to avoid even the appearance of impropriety? Should he have done more due diligence with regard to his business associates? This is a man running for the President of the US, where judgement is a key issue. It is not just illegality, but also good judgement that is at issue.

#5:   The pressure being applied to those super-delegates is outside of the campaign's control.  They may be supporters, but not staffers.  When Obama's campaign does try to reach out to superdelegates and endorsements, they do so in a more precise and careful fashion(as Bill Richardson himself has said.)'

I'm sure the pressures on Superdelegates from both sides is enormous.

#6:   Barack Obama denounced Louis Farrakhan at the debate and many times before that.  He then rejected Louis Farrakhan's endorsement.  Maybe Hillary should denounce and reject Bill Cunningham, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter?  Maybe not.  Maybe it doesn't really matter to many beyond yourself.

I agree that he has answered the Farrakan matter. It probably doesn't help your arguement tostart throwing in the wingnuts.

#7:  Reverend Wright is in retirement.  Wright DID say that Farrakhan excelled in greatness, but that was in regards to an issue beyond "greatness in Anti-Semitism."  Something about poverty or something.  At any rate, who cares?  He made his position with Farrakhan clear.  The only ones who care are probably the last people who have any business voting in the Democratic primary(because we're suppose to be above such pettiness).

I don't know anything about this one.

#8:  Republicans for Obama are clear in their intention; to vote for Obama, and not against Clinton.  Some trickle in to vote against her regardless of those Republicans who have genuinely been converted.  You are referring to something that was mis-reported, a commentor on Republicans for Obama said to vote against Clinton and it was reported as a statement.  There's also the guy in Nevada who tried getting Republicans to vote against Clinton, but the campaign quickly came down on him for that.

I would not be so sure. I just saw a CNN piece with a truck in the background with a sign on the door saying something about a coalition to Stop Hillary Clinton. The news story was about how this was a Texas Republican stronghold and many people were crossing over to vote for Obama. It may be as you say, but I guess we will have to see what happens and get the post mortem.

#9:  His plan LEAVES OUT 15 million(no where does it say that some people won't be allowed to buy health care), he's naive(not being afraid to meet with hostile leaders and tell them where American stands), he's rash(being in favor or strategically striking Al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan's NW Frontier), he's afraid to debate her, he's flip-flopping on public financing(I got her campaign's talking points confused with McCain's!), she's ready and others(Obama) are not, he's peddling false hopes, his head is up in the clouds, he went to a madrassa(Bob Kerrey), he's not electable because Republicans will ask him if he was a drug dealer(Billy Shaheen), etc.

Best answer here is the most common one. Unless a Democrat starts with a plan that covers everyone universally, there is no way we will get meaningful health care reform. The powerful health, drug and insurance industries will cherry pick anything to death.

#10:  
Ethics, nuclear proliferation, VA reform, etc.  Oh, and primary elections :)

That's pretty thin. But then again the question is not very fair since he's only been in the Senate for a couple years and the entire time he's been running for President. That last is a little snarky, but I believe that it is relevant that he has hardly done anything as a Senator and already he's on the way to the White House. Also in 2004 he said that he would not run for the Presidency if elected to the Senate because he would not have enough experience. He has gone back on that promise obviously.

As a note, the rhetoric is way too heated.

Completely agree and thank you for taking the time to answer each question with a thoughtful considered response. If more people engaged in such subsantive discussions we would all do our candidates a better service.

"He became chairman almost exactly when he launched his official campaign for the Presidency.  He hasn't used it to boost his credentials."

WTF.  Is that the best you can do to explain his lack of ANY WORK on a committee that was responsible for oversite of GW in - of all places, Afghanistan.

So the Big BO is waiting to be POTUS before he does anything on one of his big foreign policy claims.

Oh, please.

Can you restate this with the following?

Rezko:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/200802 18/pl_bloomberg/ar8nlioqedc4

Canada:

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsm emo.com/2008/02/obama_adviser_denies_ctv s_late.php

And

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0 208/Talking_to_Canada.html

I just put this on another myDD rant/diary.

Do you people even care that Obama's subcommittee doesn't have jursdiction over the American interests in the Afganistan?  That is covered by Kerry's committee.

In fact AFAICT doesn't meet much (7 times in 9 years before Obama.)

Even Richard Lugar has said that criticizing Obama for not holding hearings on Afghanistan & NATO is unfair. Any hearings on that topic, he has said, are important enough that they'd be held before the full Foreign Relations Committee.

That is, I only want to address two items, although more could be addressed.

#1.  This is one of my very biggest beefs with Obama - that he has spent nearly his entire Senate tenure not doing the work he was "hired" to do.  Instead he has been running for another job.  Back when he won against the woebegone Keyes, he said he wouldn't run for national office in 2008.  Well, here we are.  Hillary kept her word to the voters of New York and got significant (and often bipartisan) work done in the Senate.  For Obama, everything is a stepping stone and he really is all about himself.  

#6.  The "endorsements" of Limbaugh and Coulter (I don't know who Cunningham is) are not real endorsements, as we all know.  Farrakhan, OTOH, was very serious about his endorsement.  If someone wants to ask HRC in a debate about the words of Coulter et al., I'm sure she will renounce any desire to have any of these folks endorse her.

If the author of this diary has integrity they must include this link:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ statements/284/

Anyone taking this quote out of context is guilty of manipulation and should not be trusted.

I have posted this in another manipulative pro-HRC diary.

BHO was quick to denounce Farrakhan, he had also done so on the record before the debate.  

What about when HRC had listened politely in the West Bank city of Ramallah as Suha Arafat unleashed a torrent of accusations against Israel?
"It is important to point out here the severe damage caused by the intensive daily use of poison gas by Israeli forces in the past years that has led to an increase in cancer cases against Palestinian women and children," Mrs Arafat said.
She added that 80% of water resources were contaminated, and that the ground was full of chemicals banned internationally.

HRC did nothing at the time of the comments,even though she was listening to a translation.  Then the next day she still didn't "denounce" the comments.

Mrs Clinton was responding to accusations by Suha Arafat that Israel had contaminated Palestinian areas with poison gas.
"Everyone who supports this (peace) effort should refrain from inflammatory rhetoric and from baseless accusations... that could in any way adversely affect what the parties are attempting to achieve,"

Now more than eight years later I demand that HRC must unequivocally and specifically denounce and reject Mrs. Arafat, or else we'll have proof that she hates Israel.

Jefferson was a Founding Father before he was even 35.

By the way, can you tell me how much foreign policy experience William Jefferson Clinton had when he became President?  I thought he did well enough.  So does most of the country, including Hillary.  People like you give HRC supporters a bad name.

How much experience did Abraham Lincoln have?

but the language is misleading.  Obama's plan does not leave on 15 million people, it's all about ASSESS to health care.  Of course not EVERYONE will get insurance under his plan, and to prevent people from cheating the system he has toyed with the idea of a fee or fine of some kind.   However, Hillary's plan does not guarantee that everyone will have insurance.  She has yet to say how her mandate would be enforced(which is VITAL if a mandate is the main difference between the health care plan) and has yet to specify the subsidies that would be given to those that would be forced to buy health insurance.

Mandated health care can have horrible consequences.  Just ask the good people of Massachusetts.  Romney and the Democratic state congress got us universal health care(not single-payer, and loved by the insurance companies), and we still have plenty of people who are uninsured.  Worse yet; not only do they not have health care, but they have a fine ontop of it.

That's what Hillary says but it's simply not true.  First of all, neither candidate is proposing universal healthcare.  Hillary is proposing universal health INSURANCE -- a law requiring everyone to purchase private health insurance or be punished.  Such a law will never get passed - in fact, I wouldn't even want a law passed where the federal government takes money from me forcibly to pay it to a large corporation.

Obama's plan is that he will force the mandate against the insurance companies instead of us.  He will force them to reduce the premiums and remove the restriction for pre-existing conditions.  Those people who have no insurance because 1) they can't afford it and/or 2) they couldn't get it because of medical history, will be able to purchase it under his plan.

Hillary picked a number of 15 million people who she thinks would not buy health insurance even if it was available and affordable.  I seriously doubt that is accurate.

Was it Obama's campaign staff that was caught forwarding viral e-mails about him being a Muslim, a racist, a terrorist?
Was It Obama's campaign, or Bob Kerrey(Clinton surrogate) that said "it's so nice that his middle name is 'Hussein" and that he went to a madrassa"?
Was It Obama's campaign or Billy Shaheen who questioned his electability?  Who said that the Republicans would be asking if he was ever a drug dealer?
Was It Obama's campaign that, when asked for an opinion on the criticism of two Clintons running against Obama, that said "well, Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in '84 and '88?"

The only thing that Obama's campaign did was that one memo, put together by a single staffer in South Carolina, that really was nothing other than a collection of ill-advised comments about Barack Obama.  It was the first and LAST of those memos.

Cite sources, Grandma M.  ESPECIALLY if you are going to make outrageous claims like that to try and paint him as a scary closet-Muslim.   I thought this was a place for Democrats with Democratic Ideals, not Democrats with right-wing Republican hate-peddling and fear-mongering.

Grandma M I have read your diaries and there is certainly a lot of information in them. I also think from your comments that you believe that Obama is sexist, and that this disqualifies him.

Concerning your work. For me it divides into three camps 1) issues related to Obama's substantive public record and 2) issues related to his race and religion 3) issues related to sexism.

I also see that you harbor concerns that the Republicans will use at least 1) and 2) against him in the general election and that he is unprepared for the onslaught, particularly given the substance of 1) and 2), but also his naivety and general inexperience in dealing with a very clever, viscious and power opposition which controls the media. (This is something I too am terrified of and have written extensively about.)

I think many here would like to better understand your purpose in raising these issues, because many have responded to your posts with concerns about rascism on your part.

First concerning 1). It seems obvious that substantive stuff about his record including NAFTAgate and Rezko are very big time bombs that the wingnuts will do everything they can to exploit. To the extent that he has been given a free pass on these matters by the media so far and the way he has addressed them (like refusing to answer...) we have a huge problem.

Concerning 2). I appreciate that the right wingers will use all this race stuff that you have dug up. It is imperative that Democrats go into the general with as much knowledge as possible about what is going to be coming at us. Is that the purpose behind you research, or are you trying to play the race card yourself? It is a simple question?

Concerning 3). I don't know. I have my own opinion, but that's not the subject of my comment here, but by all means feel free to comment on this as well.

Bottom line is that there has been a lot of negative reaction to your posts from the point of view of race and religion and it might be a good idea to step back and explain yourself if you want to.

if BO is the Dem candidate...and write in Hillary Clinton.

Oh, give the poor little fellow a break, can't you see he doesn't even know how to count?

He has.  He denounced Farrakhan's anti-semitism, amongst other things, many times.  No matter how often you say "he didn't say anything," it doesn't change reality.

The original questions are mostly fair ones in my opinion. I agree that some of the comment questions concerning race and religion are not appropriate. The point some may be trying to make is that those things will be taken up by the right wing Thugs in the general. Well, that should not be any of our concern. Democrats need to win with the truth, and not run and hide from the big nasties on the other side.

We will be running a woman or an African American man. The wingnuts are going to try to have a field day with either. That's the ground Democrats need to stake out and hold. This is a country of all races and both genders. We can win that one. The other stubstantive concerns raised by most of these questions need to be separated from race related issues.

That is not to say that we don't need to go in with our heads up realizing what is going to be coming at us with either of our candidates, but we need to reject the premise that they will beat Obama because of his race/religion or Clinton because of her gender. That's their game and we don't need to play it.

Fact Check on Clinton Campaign's Claim that Obama Asserted Rockefeller Voted Against the War
March 02, 2008

Despite the Clinton campaign's claims, Barack Obama was clearly referring to Senator Graham, not Senator Rockefeller today"Now I have to say, when it came to making the most important foreign policy decision of our generation - the decision to invade Iraq - Senator Clinton got it wrong. She didn't read the National Intelligence Estimate. Jay Rockefeller read it, but she didn't read it. I don't know what all that experience got her because I have enough experience to know that if you have a National Intelligence Estimate and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says, "You should read this, this is why I'm voting against the war," you should read it. I don't know how much experience you need for that."
Bob Graham, The Chair Of The Intelligence Committee in 2002, Voted Against The War Because Of What He Read In The Nie

Senator Graham: The Classified NIE "Contained Vigorous Dissents On Key Parts Of The Information" With "Particular Skepticism" on Aluminum Tubes--"The American People Needed To Know These Reservations." In an op-ed titled "What I Knew Before the Invasion," Bob Graham wrote of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, "There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked. The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs.' It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as 'If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year,' underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq. From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth." [Washington Post, 11/20/05]

The Contents Of The NIE Led Bob Graham To Vote Against The War. Gerth and Van Natta wrote, "The question of whether Clinton took the time to read the N.I.E. report is critically important. Indeed, one of Clinton's Democratic colleagues, Bob Graham, the Florida senator who was then the chairman of the intelligence committee, said he voted against the resolution on the war, in part, because he had read the complete N.I.E. report. Graham said he found that it did not persuade him that Iraq possessed W.M.D. As a result, he listened to Bush's claims more skeptically." [New York Times, 6/3/07]

Sen. Graham Read The NIE Before Voting Against The Iraq War. "But no more than a half-dozen or so members actually come to review the NIE, despite the urgings of Peter Zimmerman, the scientific advisor to the Senate foreign relations committee, who is one of the first to look at the document. Zimmerman was stunned to see how severely the dissenting opinions of the Energy Department and the State Department undercut the conclusions that were so boldly stated in the NIE's 'Key Judgments' section. He later recalls, 'Boy, there's nothing in there. If anybody takes the time to actually read this, they can't believe there actually are major WMD programs.' One of the lawmakers who does read the document is Senator Bob Graham (D-Fl). Like Zimmerman, he is disturbed by the document's 'many nuances and outright dissents.' But he is unable to say anything about them in public because the NIE is classified." ["Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," Isikoff and Corn, p. 133-134, 137]

Someone in politics, running for the Presidency, with an ego?  Say it isn't so!

Obama has in the past been a co-sponsor of similar bills. What it is about the language or provisions of this one I don't know, but he ought to address it. It is odd.

You know..  Condi hasn't been that bad as a Secretary of State, all circumstances considering.  She's a Secretary for Bush, so you can't expect much.  She has, however, stood up to Cheney.   So give her SOME credit for marginalizing the worst VP in history

he specifically denounced the anti-Semitism but did not address Farrahkan's race-baiting and open bigotry towards whites in general.