gruzchiki spb…

I’m just floating today. (But I still don’t trust HRC).

TruthSeeker, she probably fired her webmaster. Her campaign is in the red. It also goes to show why she lost…inefficient. Yep, mediocrity keeps rearing it’s head in her campaign.

Check out my blog if you want to have a serious, prolonged discussion about the “surge” and “progress”. Eat your vegetables, do your push-ups, and be prepared to bring some considerable intellectual rigor into the arena. Suffice it to say that a similar propaganda campaign was used during conduct of the Vietnam War forty years ago. Facts on the ground are completely disconnected from reality as shown by John McCain saying he never felt “safer” in Baghdad while esconced by troops and a chopper overhead and the street closed to traffic.

I was simply hypothesizing that if Obama picks Hagel, and McCain picks Leiberman then the main focus of the election will be Iraq, as demonstrated by the VP choices.

I am not a warmonger. I support sticking with the surge as long as it continues to show success and progress.

To quote Obama, “We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in…”

IMO, leaving carefully means believing in the ability of our troops and the Iraqi people to succeed, sticking with the surge, consulting and listening to the generals and adapting to the conditions ‘on the ground.’

I am not nearly as pessimistic about this country as you appear to be.

“Then the election will truly hinge on our progress in Iraq. If it continues to go well, McCain wins”

In a sick war monger’s world.

The country is turned upside down and all you can think about is winning Iraq?

To rousing applause, Barack Obama formally announced this afternoon that the Democratic National Committee will follow his lead and begin refusing donations from registered lobbyists and special-interest political action committees.

“They do not fund my campaign,” the presumptive Democratic nominee told a small-town southwest Virginia crowd, after delivering a standard refrain that blames drug and insurance interests for blocking universal health care. “They will not fund our party. And they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I’m President of the United States.”

Well, at least not on the presidential level.

The Obama campaign confirms that two other arms of the national party – the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – will continue to accept lobby and PAC money this election. That’s the same position as presumptive Republican nominee John McCain and every affiliate of the Republican National Committee, who all accept lobby and PAC dollars.

To make this clear, lobbyist PACs will continue to fund the Democratic Party, regardless of what Obama claimed earlier today. That has to be the fastest flip-flop since Hillary Clinton changed position on illegal-alien drivers licenses within 120 seconds last November. Obama clearly intended people to believe that the entire party had orders to turn down these donations, which even they acknowledged was false from the beginning.

Besides, all that does is redirect lobbyist money from PACs to individuals. While acting holier-than-thou, the Obama campaign has had no problems having big-ticket lobbyists among their bundlers. Two of the top bundlers for his campaign lobby for the oil industry. Obama wants to pretend that that he remains free of influence from lobbyists, but by his own definition of influence, he’s in their pockets already.

This continues a very tiresome theme in this election, which demonizes lobbyists instead of the elected representatives they lobby. The issue isn’t lobbyists but the expansive amount of spoils that they can grab at the federal level. If a candidate wants to reduce the influence lobbyists have, they would enact policies that shrink the reach and cost of federal government. Barack Obama’s policies do exactly the opposite, expanding government control and spending, increasing the spoils for lobbyists given to them by elected representatives.

When Obama kicks all of the lobbyists out of his bundlers, rejects all contributions from people employed at firms that do lobbying, and then extends that policy to all of the official Democratic Party committees, then he will have told the truth in today’s announcement. Until then, he’s still the man who took $125,000 from Jack Abramoff’s firm by holding a fundraiser in their offices and essentially lying about his stance on lobbyists.

If Obama picks Hagel, look for McCain to choose Liberman.

BTW, Change is not synonymous with improvement.

Then the election will truly hinge on our progress in Iraq. If it continues to go well, McCain wins.

On her site, there’s a video still harping on her 17 million voters and no sign that she’s thrown her support to Barack.

Obama has indicated that he doesn’t want a lot 527s advertising from his side of the cmapaign, and called on McCain to make the same commitment. And most observers believe that McCain finds such tactics extremely distasteful, as he well should after his own experience in 2000. But it’s hard to see a path for him to win in November without the right-wing smear machine running full blast. It’s not like he has just a whole lot he’s got going for him on the actual, you know, issues.

Calling his choice of running mate “the most important decision that I will make before I am president,” the senator from Illinois said he would “be deliberate and systematic about it because this will be my final counselor when I am making decisions in the White House, and I want to make sure I get it right.”

Many of Clinton’s supporters have publicly called on Obama to put Clinton on the ticket to help unify the party since he captured the nomination Tuesday night, but Obama said he would not respond to pressure from others on who he should choose.

“We have a committee that’s made up of wonderful people. They are going to go through the procedure, and vet, and get recommendations. I will meet with a range of a people, and I will ultimately make a decision.

“I am a big believer in making decision well, not making them fast and not responding to pressure,” he also said.

Bad. McCain doesn’t have the money Obama does.

Is Move-On an example of a political action committee? Just wondering…

Same here. He keeps this up, people may start to believe he’s actually serious about this “change” stuff.

I’m personally looking forward to the debate where McCain tries to call him out on his earlier statement about taking publc financing, and Obama repsonds, “I don’t accept money from lobbyists. I’ve raised X million dollars from Y million contributors, giving an averge of Z dollars apiece. How much more public can you get?”

pwned.

That should do away with some of the republican donors.