"Don't blame me; I am just a new supporter trying to figure out who he really is!"

Or how about this one:

"I'm on board with Obama, but I'm super concerned"

Concern trolling evolved overnight and is now cutting edge.

Supposed to be 90 here today...

a bit about this yesterday.

That he had put a a person in charge of his economic plan that was a wal-mart lawyer. This bugged me more than the "Hillary was on wal-marts board" thing.

Here is why. From what I heard his time working for wal-mart was in the era of time when most of us know how bad wal-mart is. I believe that the time Hillary was with wal-mart, was much longer ago before they became the assholes that they are now.

I remember long ago that wal-mart used to push the "made in America" labels. Now it is take jobs from America and give them to slave labor.

Progressive Blue

I'm voting Republican! Go John McCain! Hybrid cars really suck!

The VP vetter is not a paid position, and he came up with Edwards for Kerry. Edwards! What a corporate hack, that guy, eh!

I imagine it's tough to find experienced AND squeaky-clean people in DC. The proof will be in the pudding. Same with the econ advisor. We don't know who else he's got on board, but we do know "O" likes multiple perspectives. Judge him by his decisions.

I can't answer for the Iran comment but I presume there is some difference between Kyl-Lieberman and what "O" was saying.. if nothing else, "O" did not want to officially give W an excuse to "bomb bomb bomb" Iran.

Reality is asserting itself. He's not going to junk or renegotiate Nafta nor should he. Of course all his clones who for months have been damning Nafta will either rationalize, be shocked, or criticise those pointing all this out. I suspect the far left of the Democratic party are going to be in for a few disappointments like this but is anyone really surprised.    

Haven't you heard?

You know what's ironic in all of this? I didn't warm up to Bill Clinton right away, and that permagrin he has always made me skeptical. It wasn't until I saw Primary Colors that I really got him - the scene where John Travolta is in the donut shop talking to the guy with the disabled leg, and he says something to the effect that you don't have a right to take up space on this planet if you don't honor people like that.

But Hillary - she is a mensch. The best of Bill without the phony smile. But no, we can't have that. We have to elect another phony.

Wish I had a higher toldernace for bullshit.

I hate being me.

Obama really hasn't changed is position on NAFTA or free trade.

He solidly opposed in it's present form.

He has always said agreements would be fine if certain aspects of them were addressed so as to level the playing field so all parties benefitted.

Having a Washington insider on your VP committee is almost a necessity. You need  somebody on the team that knows all the players and has the resources to find out what needs to be found out during the vetting process.

Your poll question lack one key question. I should really learn his positions on the issues.

of course not. His primary campaign was all about pandering to the far left: the Daily Kos, Democratic Underground, etc. But underneath, he's another DLC Democrat. I have no problem with this, except he masqueraded as a liberal to trash the Clintons, which to me, is not acceptable.

He likes having dissenting viewpoints on his advisory staff.

Unlike some presidents that we could mention, he wants the bad news before he wants to hear the good news, and he won't punish his advisors for disagreeing with him.

Trade

Obama believes that trade with foreign nations should strengthen the American economy and create more American jobs. He will stand firm against agreements that undermine our economic security.

   * Fight for Fair Trade: Obama will fight for a trade policy that opens up foreign markets to support good American jobs. He will use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world and stand firm against agreements like the Central American Free Trade Agreement that fail to live up to those important benchmarks. Obama will also pressure the World Trade Organization to enforce trade agreements and stop countries from continuing unfair government subsidies to foreign exporters and nontariff barriers on U.S. exports.
    * Amend the North American Free Trade Agreement: Obama believes that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.
    * Improve Transition Assistance: To help all workers adapt to a rapidly changing economy, Obama would update the existing system of Trade Adjustment Assistance by extending it to service industries, creating flexible education accounts to help workers retrain, and providing retraining assistance for workers in sectors of the economy vulnerable to dislocation before they lose their jobs.

I have no problem with Furman, honestly. I think the guy's been misquoted so often and he's a solidly mainstream Democratic economic adviser. I have to confess that I' more of a Robert Rubin-style economic centrist than I am a protectionist. I knew that both candidates were free traders at heart. Furman is no problem to me.

Johnson is a bit more of a problem because of the optics of a mortgage guy barely out of trouble. And he's so old school Democratic. But his job is purely temporary and unpaid.

Sen. Obama and his surrogates criticized Hillary for her vote on Iranian revolutionary guards. However he just about did an about face at AIPAC.

Here was his statment on Kyl Lieberman.

Senator Obama clearly recognizes the serious threat posed by Iran. However, he does not agree with the president that the best way to counter that threat is to keep large numbers of troops in Iraq, and he does not think that now is the time for saber-rattling towards Iran. In fact, he thinks that our large troop presence in Iraq has served to strengthen Iran - not weaken it. He believes that diplomacy and economic pressure, such as the divestment bill that he has proposed, is the right way to pressure the Iranian regime. Accordingly, he would have opposed the Kyl-Lieberman amendment had he been able to vote today.

No mention of what you claim his objection was.  I bet you feel so much better about your support for Obama now, don't you.

Oh, and thanks for your concern.

Choosing Furman as his economic adviosr was definitely strange. The economy will be the biggest issue this fall, and I would have hoped for a better advisor choice to help shape his policy.

While I am and will continue to be a strong Obama supporter for other reasons, it has always been his almost neo-con economic perspective that led me to first support John Edwards.

This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who's followed Obama's choice of economic advisors--many of whom are University of Chicago disciples of Friedman. Obama's voted for every international "free trade" agreement he's had a chance to vote on and has regularly indicated that he's no economic progressive. We're going to get style, we're going to get inclusion, we're going to get a morally-based vision for the presidency, but no one should be under the misperception that Obama is going to take on the multinational corporations who are wrecking your income and outsourcing your jobs. That ain't who he is.

We are still in Six for RecList world, which allows a handfull of folks to put stuff like this on the reclist.

If y'all want to keep MyDD sane, make a habit of reccing something you think is good content.

Recced by:

Hoomai29
souvarine
campskunk
masslib1
Chelsea in 2020
catfish2

The political reality of the day is less black and white, and more like many different shades of gray.

Are Clinton and Obama much more alike than some of the rhetoric to date has led us to believe? IMHO, absolutely.

Is that a bad thing? As a former fervent HRC supporter now supporting our party's nominee, I'm okay with this. Then again, I consider myself to be a strong pragmatist when it comes to this sort of thing.

Are our leaders allowed to modify their positions on the issues? Well, after eight years of knuckleheaded stubbornness and misinformation, I'm all in favor of all of our leaders continually taking all aspects of of a dynamic, constantly-evolving world into consideration as they formulate our go-forward strategy now and...going forward!

It's because our country's leaders have not maintained an open mind in the past eight years, choosing instead to support doctrinaire-based management, even when they knew it was leading us down a path of gross failure, that got us in the mess we're in today.

It's called adjusting to the current reality and being open to new information. If only Chimpy and his gang had a clue that this "style" is more than a concept we'd all be in a better place, as a country, than we are now.

Ok, you can call this parsing, but that's what lawyers like Obama, Clinton and myself are suppose to do.

The Quds guard is a small subset of the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard so Obama is still being consistent if he says that the RG is not a terrorist organization per se, but that the Quds guard is.

Let me give you an analogy.  Can we potentially argue the difference in capacity between the US Navy versus Navy SEALS?  Between the entire US military and the Delta Force?  Is there a difference between the US Rangers and the Green Berets?

I would state that there is and that Obama's careful delineation is not an "about face".  If you want to set up a talk about military force structure, I can start a diary on that.  It should be interesting.

Logically, a classification of a subset should not extent out to the entire set.  Right?  Didn't we learn that in elementary school?

Has anyone made a serious effort to answer the diarists questions?  I will.

1) Given the people that Barack Obama surrounds himself with, as well as my general sense of things, he seems to be about as pro-business as the Clintons are.  Craig Crawford deals in stereotypes and may be shocked that he's not turning out to be a DFL Democrat, but people who were paying attention aren't.  I think he's susceptible to pressure from organized labor, which is a good thing.

2) I don't give a fuck who's on his VP vetting team.  Can't imagine why anyone would.  I think the people who do are looking for angles.

3) The "rightly been labeled a terrorist organization" threw me for a loop.  It's the one thing in your list that runs counter to what he said during the primaries.

I don't think black people can get elected unless they're rhetoric is extremely pro-AIPAC.  Witness the number of times Obama has had to reject and denounce Louis Farrakhan: it's a ritual that all black politicians beyond the level Alderman have to do.  It's regretable but it's life.

Anyway, to recap, the thing regarding what he said about the Quds forces is the only thing you should be "puzzled!" about.

that Obama and Clinton were to corporate friendly for me. That is why I wanted John Edwards! Yesterday was Edwards bday, many people posted videos, etc about JE.  I was able to see and hear some of John Edwards words that first brought me to him and those words are MISSING from BO and HC right now.

Progressive Blue

Obama likes to get a wide arrange of opinions on all issues. He's not looking for "Yes" people who only reinforce his views. He believes that having competing viewpoints and genuine discussion is the best procedure for getting the best outcome. And I agree. He's solid on is SOP's and avoiding group-think.

That's the big overarching response. As to the particulars.

Johnson isn't an appointment, you can't appoint anyone in government until you are President (pet peeve).

He is a volunteer with experience who is helping to vet the VP, something he has done for previous Democratic candidates. He is not advising Obama on policy, has no authority, and is unpaid.

Regarding NAFTA, you can't run as anti-trade in this in environment. Not and win, anyway. I don't think he's changed his position on wanting to renegotiate it. Nothing to indicate that.

Fact is, there are many Democrats who were/are free-traders. Agree or disagree, we shouldn't lock them out.

Regarding the Kuds force thing, I tend to agree with you. That seems to be a reversal. But there is some wiggle room there (I guess one could say the deserve to be called terrorists while maintaining that for Congress to do so is unwise/counterproductive).

Peace.
 

And now Sen. Obama is wearing a flag pin; a born-again patriot.

And add T