Tag: Barack Obama (page 46)

Update: The AP says Obama has not responded to repeated requests to release his earmark legislation for six of his eightyears in the Illinois Senate. Yet, he's criticizing Hillary on this score:

While silent about Obama's spending in Illinois, his campaign has criticized Democratic presidential rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for withholding similar information about her years in the U.S. Senate.

Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said Thursday that her position should prompt voters to "ask why she doesn't believe they have the right to know she wants to spend their tax dollars."

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Sen. Barack Obama released his list of 2006 legislation with earmarks today. He has the list on his website here.

Among them, an $8 million request for the "High Explosive Air Burst Technology Program." Ultimately, $1.3 million in funding was awarded for the program. [More...]

The University of Wisconsin Advertising project has released an interesting report (pdf)on ad spending in Ohio by the candidates and interest groups supporting them:

Obama outspent Hillary 2 to 1 on ads.

In the high-profile Ohio presidential primary campaign, the campaigns of the two Democratic candidates for president aired over 16,000 spots, spending approximately $6.8 million. Obama outspent Clinton by a margin of nearly two-to-one, with the Illinois Senator spending over $4.4 million to air just over 10,000 spots. Clinton spent $2.3 million and aired just over six thousand spots. Republicans were largely absent in Ohio; neither John McCain nor Mike Huckabee aired a single ad leading up to the Ohio primary.

The SEIU and United Food and Commerical Workers Int'l Union spent $1 million in Ohio on ads for Obama. The 527 group supporting Hillary took spent $80,000. [More...]

Bonnie Erbe, writing in her Scrips-Howard column today, quotes from a copy of a memo forwarded to her that was written by a professor in North Carolina who volunteered for Hillary at the Washington State Caucuses. The prof is a volunteer and was writing to warn other Clinton volunteers of tactics the Obama campaign reportedly used in other states.

First, the background from Bonnie:

I have obtained a copy of a memo written by a Clinton campaign volunteer in Washington state intended only for other Clinton volunteers in subsequent caucus states (specifically for Texas campaign volunteers). It warns them of "caucus disruption strategies" by supporters of Sen. Barack Obama.

More...

The corruption trial of Tony Rezko continued Monday. At one point, Barack Obama's name surfaced in connection with recommendations for job appointments:

Obama's name surfaced briefly Monday as Rezko's lawyers introduced a series of e-mail exchanges in June 2003 involving lobbyist Matthew Pickering, Blagojevich lawyer Susan Lichtenstein and Monk, then the governor's chief of staff.

Pickering worked in the lobbying firm of David Wilhelm, who ran Blagojevich's 2002 campaign. In one e-mail, Pickering laid out a list of four people he and Wilhelm wanted Blagojevich to consider for appointment to the hospital planning board. Pickering also mentioned that the firm had worked closely with several top legislators, Obama included, in pushing legislation to overhaul the hospital board.

Lawyers for Rezko said the e-mail did not suggest a connection between Obama and the candidates pushed by Wilhelm for the hospital panel.

The New York Times reports on the e-mail:[More...]

Space Shuttle Endeavor lifts off Tuesday.

In a little reported difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that was highlighted Friday in Wyoming , Obama said he proposes cutting NASA's budget to fund things like education, while Hillary has a plan to strengthen it.

2:40 p.m. A question about the space program is next. “Why are you pitting the space program against education?”

Obama says he wants to defer the program “because we’re not producing enough engineers to support the space program.” He said he grew up in the ‘60s and remembered the days when the space program captured the public’s imagination.

Including his. “I grew up on Star Trek,” he said. “I believe in the Final Frontier.”

Another reporter had more:

Four not to miss, and I'm just getting started:

• The New York Times: Obama in Senate: Star Power, Minor Role. I've read another article like this in the past few days but didn't write about it because the person critical of Obama was a Republican. This one has some meat from Democrats on page 3.

• The Washington Post: Influential Democrats Waiting to Choose Sides. The Post does a survey of undeclared superdelegates, finding most will wait until the primaries are over. And 100 votes or so difference is no big deal. They'll exercise their independent function not just vote the way the voters do. Why have them if that's their only purpose? Some, like Sen. Salazar of Colorado, say the decision will based on which candidate can better bring it home for the Dems in their state in November.

• The Washington Post: Philadelphia Mayor's Endorsement Suddenly Matters: Philly's African American Mayor explains why he's staying with Hillary. When asked about Philly being 45% African American, after noting he won both the black and white vote, he said:

  "We feel a certain sense of freedom and progressiveness here," Nutter said of the City of Brotherly Love. "The notion that all black people vote one way has to be destroyed."

More...

Sen. Barack Obama likes to say he intends to rely on the people around him in making presidential decisions.

We've seen how that would play out with Samantha Power. Now there's John Brennan, one of his advisers on intelligence and foreign policy.

Think Progress reports:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has consistently spoken out and voted against granting retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. This stance was part of the reason he won the support of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), a leader on civil liberties issues.

One of Obama’s advisers on intelligence and foreign policy advisers, however, is someone who “strongly” supports telecomm immunity.

What Brennan told the National Journal is below the fold:

As a follow-up to my earlier post about Samantha Power and surrogates gone wild, Drudge reports Barack Obama has renounced and rejected his senior foreign policy advisor's remark to a Scottish newspaper that Hillary Clinton is a monster.

According to Drudge (the only place right now this is appearing):

Statement from Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton: Senator Obama decries such characterizations which have no place in this campaign...

ABC News reminds us:

In December, Obama said he had "been very clear to my campaign. I do not want to see research that is involved in trying to tear people down personally. If I find out that somebody is doing that, they will be fired. And I have been absolutely crystal clear about this, and I have been clear about this for a very long time."

Also check out Martin Lewis at HuffPo.

I want to know more about Samantha Power besides her educational and publishing background. If Obama is elected, she could be in his cabinet. What are her positions on foreign issues?

In the latest edition of Surrogates Gone Wild: Obama's key foreign policy aide Samantha Power has called Hillary Clinton "a monster."

We f***** up in Ohio," she admitted. "In Ohio, they are obsessed and Hillary is going to town on it, because she knows Ohio's the only place they can win.

"She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything," Ms Power said, hastily trying to withdraw her remark.

Power is a Harvard Law grad.

Ms Power was head-hunted by Barack Obama to become his foreign-policy adviser in 2005 and combines this role with her job as a Time magazine columnist and professor of practice of global leadership and public policy at Harvard.

Will Obama fire her? He should.

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Barack Obama's February fundraising numbers are out. He raised $55 million.

In other news...

With Hillary's wins Tuesday, more superdelegates supporting Obama are holding off saying she should withdraw. Other superdelegates are holding off on endorsing period.

Obama faces an uphill battle in Pennsylvania.

John McCain is stepping up the inexperienced argument against Obama:

When asked if he would meet with Raul Castro of Cuba, McCain turned his answer into a criticism of Obama. “I would not in any way, as Senator Obama wants to do, legitimize an individual who has been responsible for education, repression, political prisons and a gulag,” McCain said. "I don't know if [Obama] is naïve or not, I know he is inexperienced.”

Barack Obama is now officially a rock star, He's made the cover of Rolling Stone.

Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner and the magazine endorse Barack Obama.

Curious subtitle for the article, "Obama: the Machinery of Hope." Machinery reminds me of Chicago politics. Perhaps not the best image for him.

(Washington Post Photo)

Dana Milbank has a great article in today's Washington Post about how the mainstream media reporters came out of their stupor today to grill Barack Obama -- on NAFTA, on Rezko, on whether he will lose the Jewish vote and on his record. (Transcript is here.)

It took many months and the mockery of "Saturday Night Live" to make it happen, but the lumbering beast that is the press corps finally roused itself from its slumber Monday and greeted Barack Obama with a menacing growl.

The day before primaries in Ohio and Texas that could effectively seal the Democratic presidential nomination for him, a smiling Obama strode out to a news conference at a veterans facility here. But the grin was quickly replaced by the surprised look of a man bitten by his own dog.

Obama was clearly flustered. [More...]