President Obama 2008

[DJ_Skrilla]

my cousin claims his name is too close to a terrorist so he wont get elected. Of course the kentuckian red states will vote based on that... but I think he is the dems best bet.

OR we can have another diebold scandal, which wouldnt shock anyone

[DroppinScience]

Initially, there can be the "OH NOES, OBAMA IS JUST ONE LETTER DIFFERENT FROM OSAMA!! :eek: " but I'm pretty sure Obama will rise above that crap because once anybody gets to see Obama in action, the whole "weird name" business goes away.

[SobaViolence]

anyone who wont vote for someone whose name slighlt resembles a commonly held arab/muslim name shouldnt be allowed to vote and quickly sterilized.

fucking americans.

DAMMIT! his name is John Smith, and I HATE MORMONS! Im not voting for him!

[DroppinScience]

In all seriousness, they'll get over the "funny name" and judge him for his merits, not what his surname is.

I mean, he's made it this far with the name and he was elected to the Senate with 80% of the vote (of a very, very white and rural state it's worth mentioning), so America as a whole will get over it. Trust me.

[SobaViolence]

you give the majority of americans far too much credit...

[DroppinScience]

you give the majority of americans far too much credit...

No, I'm giving Obama credit for being able to cross over in the way he has in the short time of his political career ALREADY. Look at his campaign to the Senate, there were eyebrows raised over his name right then and there, but you know what? It didn't last, and I think any efforts to make fun of his name BACKFIRED. If he's thrust towards the race of the Presidency, there'll be the joking of his name, but have you seen him handle it right now? He uses it to his advantage, going against the conventional wisdom of his advisors (early on, he was told, he could make it with one "normal" name and one "funny" name, but not two).

All I'm trying to say is this: Obama's future political success or failure will be because of his character, actions, policies, etc. The name is beside the point (or even, dare I say it, could even help him in some small way), as has been proven so far.

[QueenAdrock]

fucking americans.

Settle down now. The only morons who won't vote for him based on his name sounding like Osama are the fucktards who voted for Bush because they thought he was doing a good job in Iraq and believed if they voted for Kerry the country would be overtaken by baby-killing terrorist homosexuals.

Oh. We're fucked. :(

[QueenAdrock]

there'll be the joking of his name

He should just change his name to Doodle von Taintstain and get it over with already.

[Documad]

I don't get it. I don't understand why he's being shoved down our throats. He needs to be a senator for a while and see if he can accomplish something before we annoint him as our god. :rolleyes:

[D_Raay]

I don't get it. I don't understand why he's being shoved down our throats. He needs to be a senator for a while and see if he can accomplish something before we annoint him as our god. :rolleyes:
They don't seem to be giving us any choice but Obama or Hillary at the moment.

[Bob]

fucking soba

[abcdefz]

His middle name is "Hussein," by the way.

[QueenAdrock]

I heard it was Al-Hussein, actually. Check your facts, a-z.

[abcdefz]

Born Barrack Hussein Obama (http://usliberals.about.com/od/congressionalleadership/p/SenObama.htm), Jr, son of a Nairobi-born Harvard-educated economist and a Caucasian anthropologist, was 2 years old when his parents divorced.

His father (deceased in 1982) returned to Kenya, and only saw his son once more. His mother remarried, and moved Barack to Jakarta, Indonesia. He returned to Hawaii at age 10 to live with his maternal grandparents. He attended the respected Punahou School, graduating with honors. (As a teenager, he scooped ice cream at Baskins-Robbins!)

[saz]

I don't get it. I don't understand why he's being shoved down our throats. He needs to be a senator for a while and see if he can accomplish something before we annoint him as our god. :rolleyes:

i don't think that anyone here, or in the media for that matter, has suggested annoiting him as your god. regardless, i think more and more people are turning to obama and really like what they see, because he really does appear to be a genuine human being, who will place the common good of the u.s. above special interests and partisanship. obama speaks extremely clearly, modestly, honestly and openly. he doesn't provide nor regurgitate the usual b.s. that comes forth from the greater majority of politicians. he connects with people, with just about anybody, which is an extremely rare and exceptional attribute. and i really believe that not only america, but the world on the whole could truly benefit from having him in a prime leadership role. after the absolute lawless, despicable, arrogant and ethnocentric warmongering of the bush administration, obama is probably the only indiviual who i can think of who could reach out to not only the middle east, but the entire world and begin to rehabilitate america's image and foreign policy. and, actually building rhetorical bridges and roads to the middle east, in which bush and his neo-con fanatics have practically caused irreparable damage. i'm with you 100% when it comes to the experience factor, however i don't really think that he needs to toil away in the senate. at least for that much longer, anyways. i think he's a really upstanding person who can provide and apply real and practical solutions to all sorts of various national, and international dilemmas. having obama around and in the media spotlight is very refreshing. in addition, the last thing i want to see is hillary clinton receiving the nomination. she is such an elitist and a fake, and she really reminds of nothing more than that proverbial bitch principal or vice-principal we all had in high school.

[yeahwho]

His middle name is "Hussein," by the way.

Wouldn't it be cool if his middle name was "Beastie Boy"....as in Barack Beastie Boy Obama.

[QueenAdrock]

Born Barrack Hussein Obama (http://usliberals.about.com/od/congressionalleadership/p/SenObama.htm), Jr, son of a Nairobi-born Harvard-educated economist and a Caucasian anthropologist, was 2 years old when his parents divorced.

Hahaha, no shit? Whoa, I thought you were joking and I was just taking it further.

Wow. Well, keep that fact away from the public then. :-/

[ms.peachy]

I think he's an interesting guy, with a lot of integrity. But I do think it is far too soon in his public service career to put him into the ring as a presidential contender. I'm keen to see what he can do over the next few years. If it comes to it that he runs in '08, I would of course give him serious consideration, but I'm not as yet comfortable saying "oh yeah, he should run."

[yeahwho]

I like Obama more than anybody else currently in the "arena" of democratic presidential hopefuls. After this past administration it would be like a superhero was running the country. In a very short time, Barack Obama has made himself into a figure of national interest, curiosity and some undefined hope.

There is a breath of fresh air coming through the cracks at the door, that's going to keep the other presidential hopefuls hopping and jumping.

Here is a quote culled from his recent book, THE AUDACITY OF HOPE
Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream,

“I find comfort in the fact that the longer I’m in politics the less nourishing popularity becomes, that a striving for power and rank and fame seems to betray a poverty of ambition, and that I am answerable mainly to the steady gaze of my own conscience.”

[The Notorious LOL]

he would make a better VP candidate.

[QueenAdrock]

^Yup. Better chance, and it would help his chances for the presidency later on.

[Documad]

Once before, the US elected a truly moral and brilliant man, who had no real political experience, when the country was craving honesty and integrity after a lengthy stint of lawlessness and pointless war. That president was Jimmy Carter. He's still a lovely human being, but he was a piss poor president.

I want a president with political experience. And a track record of some kind. If you think that the presidency isn't a completely political job that takes a shitload of political skills, you have no idea what the president really does.

P.S. I hate Hillary. I don't like the way she practiced law in Arkansas, I don't like the shaddy deals, and I don't like the fact that her first instinct is always to cover up instead of to tell the truth. Plus the democratic candidate for president in 2008 needs to have been against the way early on -- and that ain't Hillary.

[saz]

carter had to govern during a rough economic period. with the exception of fdr, whenever any political leader is governing during a rough economic period, it's pretty much over for them, ie george bush, brian mulroney, bob rae, herbert hoover el al. he also ran into some very bad luck with high gas prices, the three mile island nuclear meltdown, and the shah being overthrown in iran, which then led to the hostage crisis. i also understand that up until the last week or so of the 1980 campaign, carter and reagan were neck and neck in the polls. and a 'piss poor' president wouldn't have been able to help bring terms of peace between egypt and israel. meanwhile, jfk had been a senator for approximately a decade or less when he was elected in 1960. and, there's no need to be condescending.

[yeahwho]

Excellent LATimes piece on Obama's popularity with the masses.

What is it about Obama? (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama24dec24,0,6003202,full.story?coll=la-home-headlines)

Bettylu Saltzman, a Chicago philanthropist, activist and veteran of dozens of political campaigns, recounts meeting Obama for the first time in 1992, well before he was a candidate for anything.

"I was working for the Clinton campaign, putting constituencies together. He was working on a voter registration drive. He came into our campaign office. He was 30 years old," she said. They talked for a while. Nothing exceptional happened. The next day, Saltzman recalls, she told a friend that she had just met the man who was going to be the first black president of the United States.

This is not a unique reaction. Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate and one of Obama's mentors, tells the story of attending a downstate political dinner, a fish fry, where he, his driver and Obama were the only black faces in a crowd of 3,000.

"Sitting across the table from me was a little old lady, said she was 86 years old," Jones said. "After Barack spoke, she nudged me on the shoulder and said, 'This young man is going to be president of the United States someday. I just hope I live long enough to vote for him.' "

[Dorothy Wood]

I think he rules. I voted for him heartily. sazi pretty much said it all.

[ericg]

damn good question. could i run? I'd hook it up good and proper. in any case, let's talk about precidents. sounds like prescience. who's backin' what? that's what i want to know. what's up with george green? and global green? and everyone else? little by little eh? what the fuck. all these grains going this and that way but the woodwork remains the same.. we're going to have to smooth this shit out and get it together. the best of what you can think and then sum. life can't take much more gridlocked mockups. we need traction yesterday. what is traction? aside from being the truth, it's a way to solving problems. this needs a platform. the appropriate medium to reach everyone via an integral form that generates common interest in immediate and practical terms. public goods. market failure. there's a number of terms that sum up the content of present mandates. we're at a pivotal time, macro to micro, micro to macro where forces must be identified and overcome for the sake of all life. there are many ways to do this. but recognition and organization is key. i only see us surmounting to their game right now. like people are barely starting to see. it's a hard pill to swallow. i've been around, so have to say it's barely digestable, but for people just coming into this world (at a rate of 10 million every decade, i'm drunk but could be right there, and the gap is closing)... what do we do? everything. talk about production value. anyway, there's a number of ways to liquidate polluting industry constitutionally by stocking good businesses at scale. what's the medium? mutual funds par with economic revolution? better believe it. where do you think it's at? think of all that good out there? alot more than bad by a crazy percentage. we should take the house up on this. you know what i'm talkin' about.

peace,
emg

[Documad]

I'm not a JFK fan either. He's probably our most overrated president. If he hadn't died in office, he wouldn't be nearly as popular. But his death allowed Johnson to do some good stuff (like the civil rights bill) that Kennedy never could have gotten passed. Similar thing happened after Garfield was killed. You can sometimes do more in a dead president's name than the guy you're honoring could have done himself.

I believe that Carter was elected as a democratic president when the democrats controlled everything in the country and the republicans were in ruins. But he still couldn't get a thing done domestically. It's not all about the economy. It's about how he thought he was too good for politics, and a guy like that shouldn't be president. I don't think Carter knew what the president really did before he was elected. And then he tried to change all the rules. Clinton tried something similar when he first got elected and that was a disaster too. Then he learned to play the game a bit.

Now, I like Carter's policies much better than Reagan's. I fucking hated Reagan and still do. But Reagan was a good leader. He got the things done that he wanted to get done. The complete opposite of Carter. (Yes, Carter accomplished peace between Egypt and Israel but that's because he didn't need the house and senate for foreign diplomacy, and that was one huge deal. But a huge part of the president's job is accomplishing his policies within his own country and that means working with the congress. And despite them all being from Carter's party, he couldn't do it. I blame Tip O'Neill too. But Carter tried to work around him instead of with him, and that was about the stupidest thing a democratic president could have done in the late 1970s. :) Reagan shoved his stupid policies down our throats.)

[Documad]

P.S. I'm not an Obama hater. I'll probably support him in the future at some point. I just think that he needs more than four years in a state house and two years as senator in the party that's out of power for me to think he's the second coming. I'll be watching to see what he does now that his party is kind of in power, but I figure that he and Hillary will both be posturing non stop for the next 22 months, so I'm not sure what kind of real content we will get, but I'll be watching for sure.


Oh, and that SNL sketch of Ackroyd as Carter at Three Mile Island is priceless. I never saw my dad laugh so hard.

[DroppinScience]

I'm not a JFK fan either. He's probably our most overrated president. If he hadn't died in office, he wouldn't be nearly as popular.

That's better than McKinley's fate: our least favorite assassinated president. :p

[Documad]

That's better than McKinley's fate: our least favorite assassinated president. :p
And I don't even know why! :o

I am incredibly weak on that particular bit of US history. I have been trying to get through the first of that two-book set on Teddy Roosevelt but it's slow going. I will probably learn something about McKinley in there, if I ever finish the first book.

[DroppinScience]

And I don't even know why! :o

I am incredibly weak on that particular bit of US history. I have been trying to get through the first of that two-book set on Teddy Roosevelt but it's slow going. I will probably learn something about McKinley in there, if I ever finish the first book.

I read those books a few years back. I really enjoyed them! Made me a huge fan of Teddy Roosevelt. Anyways, I can't recall much about McKinley there, other than a Polish anarchist shot him.

A big reason that McKinley isn't recognized is because his successor ran laps around him in terms of kick-assitude.

[abcdefz]

He's filing papers to put together an exploratory committee. (http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/16/obama.papers/index.html)

[skinnybutphat]

I'll be voting for a president for the 1st time soon. My guess is allot of other cynical types will be voting for the 1st time as well.

He'll win no matter who he runs with, I hope he doesn't run with Hillary.

[abcdefz]

I don't know if she'd agree (as VP), but their ticket would be pretty much unbeatable in this election.

[DroppinScience]

It seems everyone and their dog are forming "exploratory committees" instead of actually saying they'll run. :rolleyes:

[Echewta]

My cat has considered running and is filing paper work this week.

[Carlos]

Wouldn't it be cool if his middle name was "Beastie Boy"....as in Barack Beastie Boy Obama.


that's fucking classic.

Seriously, was a great speech he made to enter into the race. Although I feel that the writing is on the wall for Hilary - Obama as her vice pres prehaps, that would prob be the Democrats dreamteam..