Have the Democrats lost all their marbles?

The Hijacking of a Democratic White House in 2009

Obama twice failed to win bi-partisan support in the Senate to protect the environment and health of his Illinois Constituents.

When Senator Obama took up the cause to protect his Constituents in the event of a nuclear power plant leak, he co-sponsored two bills that intended to require nuclear plant operators to report any hazardous leaks to local government agencies. However, a closer look at the path that his legislation took tells a very different story. “While he initially fought to advance his bill, even holding up a presidential nomination to try to force a hearing on it, Mr. Obama eventually rewrote it to reflect changes sought by Senate Republicans, Exelon and nuclear regulators. Both new bills removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.”¹ The first bill died in the Senate; the second is being deliberated on by the Committee on Environment and Public Works.

It was only after a reported tritium leak in the drinking water from an Exelon nuclear power plant in Illinois in December 2005 that Senator Obama reintroduced the original bill to mandate notification by the nuclear power plants to government agencies. The problem is that he negotiated it down to nothing that resembled a mandate at all.

Carlos Javier Sanchez/Bloomberg News

John W. Rowe, chairman of Exelon and also of the Nuclear Energy Institute, a lobbying group, has been a significant Obama donor

“Senator Obama has all the necessary leadership skills required to be president,” says Frank M. Clark, chairman of Exelon’s Commonwealth Edison utility.

Obama failed to successfully negotiate protection for his Illinois Constituents regarding the simple notification of nuclear power plant leaks in their area after a radioactive tritium leak was discovered in the drinking water from an Exelon nuclear power plant in Illinois late 2005. Both his bills (S: 2348 Nuclear Release Notice Act of 2006² and S. 2224: Nuclear Release Notice Act of 2007³) were watered down by Senator Obama himself. Apparently, the low level radioactive leaks had been going on for years without notification. The new bill removed language mandating prompt reporting and simply offered guidance to regulators, whom it charged with addressing the issue of unreported leaks.” Voluntary reporting vs. mandatory reporting.

Senator Obama failed to represent his Illinois Constituents interests: immediate notification of nuclear plant leaks. Instead, Senator Obama failed in working to bring both Senate Democrats and Republicans together to agree on the bill that was clearly in the best interest of all parties: protecting the health and environment of Constituents that live near nuclear power plant facilities. Voluntary reporting brings the power back into the hands of nuclear power plant operators, like Exelon, one of Senator Obama’s biggest financial backers.

Mike McIntire writes in the NY Times, “Paul Gunter, an activist based in Maryland who assisted neighbors of the Exelon plants, said he was “disappointed in Senator Obama’s lack of follow-through,” which he said weakened the original bill. “The new legislation falls short” by failing to provide for mandatory reporting, said Mr. Gunter, whose group, Beyond Nuclear, opposes nuclear energy.”¹

In 2007, Obama pushed to get a FutureGen “clean coal” plant built in Illinois. The company is a public-private partnership that is intent on building “zero-emission” coal plants. FutureGen’s energy production is even less than a zero-sum game, however, as the company doesn’t count the energy used prior to or after the coal is burned, not to mention the disastrous consequences of coal extraction.

In 2005 Obama also voted in favor of Bush’s Energy Plan which included many favors for Bush’s oil cartel connections. To top it off Obama even opposed a House bill that would have radically altered the disastrous 1872 Mining Law that continues to allow companies to mine our public lands while they skate the costs of cleaning up their environmental wreckage.”

We’ve explored where Senator Obama as a new Senate member initially “attempted” to support major concerns of his Illinois Constituents. With further study, we have learned that he faced a blatant conflict of interest that watered down not only the bills that he initiated, but the overall health of these same Constituents that voted him into the Senate on his second attempt.

How can Senator Obama hope to achieve his Presidential agenda with zero bi-partisan success in the US Congress? How do we as Americans hope to change our country’s international stature and good will in action if we elected a President who learns “on the job?” Do we risk the lives of our heroic American men and women who are serving, wounded or dying in Iraq and Afghanistan?

How do we save our economy and the livelihood of America’s middle class at such a time of peril with a President that has zero federal experience in politically achieving bi-partisan solutions?

Major Consideration for electing a Democratic President:

Can Democrats assume that the US Senate and House of Representatives will remain a Democratic majority while electing a Democratic President? This assumption is a risk by any measure. Without a clear majority in the House and Senate, the President will have to know exactly where to begin and how to negotiate to get our heroic men and women out of Iraq, rebuild our middle class through programs designed to support and uplift them, initiate health insurance for all Americans and build a burgeoning “green” economy around renewable resources thus, reducing America’s dependence on middle east oil.

These lofty yet urgent goals of a Democratic President are critical for the well being of all Americans, the economy, global warming and saving needless lives of an unexplainable war.

¹ Nuclear Leaks and Response Tested Obama in Senate

Written By Mike McIntire, NY Times

Published: February 3, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?emc=eta1

² S. 2348 [109th]: Nuclear Release Notice Act of 2006

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s109-2348

³ S. 2224: Nuclear Release Notice Act of 2007

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s110-2224

 The Obama Glow – The Nuclear Industry’s Golden Child

Written by Joshua Frank, Atlantic Free Press

Wednesday, 27 February 2008

http://atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/3479/81/

Other investigation:

Obama’s Energy Equivocations

NYT follows up on another flip-flop, The Columbia Journalism Review

Written by Curtis Brainard Tue 5 Feb 2008

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/obamas_energy_equivocations.php

ERIN NEFF: Obama and Yucca

Written by Erin Neff May. 15, 2007

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/7509662.html

Senator Clinton Addresses Yucca Mountain-video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8_LE8_Q8D4

Barack Obama on Yucca Mountain Then and Now

Written by truthteller2007, Thu Jan 17, 2008

http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/1/17/222449/626

Politics as Usual:

Obama’s fundraising collides with his rhetoric

Union says senator did little to save jobs

By Bob Secter | Chicago Tribune reporter

February 2, 2008

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-galesburg_obama_webfeb01,0,4286527.story

Obama Gets Caught Winking at Canada on NAFTA

He says he’ll opt out of NAFTA if elected president, but Canada says the Obama camp said that’s just what he has to say in this political season.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1MPmrZxA2M

Obama Report on NAFTA and What He Told Ohio Voters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY5CQnOn75c&feature=related

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080228/turkey_Gates_080228/20080229?hub=QPeriod

Brian Ross on Obama and Tony Rezko

ABC’s Brian Ross details the financial dealings between Barack Obama and Chicago influence peddler Tony Rezko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SrtyFY6qTA

A video investigation into how Obama is cashing in on his fame.

The audacity of Barack Obama I & II

http://www.obamatruth.org/

A Family Fight or A License to Hate?

A Family Fight or a License to Hate?

By Joanne Parrent

 

So, Democrats, the media tells us we are in the midst of a “family fight.”

 

To introduce myself and my family, I am a latte-drinking, white, college-educated progressive Democrat who, despite my demographic, supports Hillary Clinton.  Maybe it is because I am also a woman over 45.  My mother and my late father are “blue collar” Democrats.  My Dad worked in a factory in the Detroit area all his life and my mother, in a medical supply house.  My mother, whose vote doesn’t count – for now at least – because she lives in Michigan, supports Hillary.  My younger sister, another educated progressive Democrat, (who, oddly, thinks Starbucks coffee is too bitter and doesn’t drink lattes), voted for Obama. We had several “family fights” about this, mostly by email since I live in the great Hillary-supporting state of California and my sister lives in Maryland, an Obama stronghold.

 

It occurs to me that my “family fight” somewhat mirrors the Democratic primary that the media has frequently characterized as a “family fight.”  Therefore, I thought Democrats, particularly those latte (or non-latte) drinking, educated, progressive, blog-reading Democrats in the upcoming primaries, would like to hear about my family fight and what I learned from it, in the hope that it could illuminate the larger battle. 

 

When I asked my sister why she didn’t want to vote for the first viable female candidate for President – and a brilliant person as well – she told me that she “hates” Hillary Clinton.  Stunned at the intensity of her feelings, I asked her “Why?”  She proceeded to give me some reasons that I found startlingly similar to the Obama campaign talking points:

 

1)     Sister:  Hillary voted for the war in Iraq.

Me: Actually, she voted to give the President the authorization to go to war so the threat of war would force Saddam Hussein to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq, which it did.  Bush, not Hillary, then decided to stop those inspections before they were done and invade Iraq. (I sent her an article in the Huffington Post by anti-war activist, former Ambassador and husband of Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, about this. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-wilson/battletested_b_86355.html )

Sister:  I don’t have time for this.  She still voted for the war, and Obama was against the war.

Me:  Obama didn’t have to make that tough decision.  He wasn’t in the Senate.  He wasn’t representing the state of New York that had been devastated on 9/11.  He just gave a speech at an anti-war rally in Chicago, in his very safe, very liberal State Senate District.  How much courage did that take? 

Sister:  Look, I’m inspired by Obama.  Democrats have the right to be inspired too, you know.

Me: Okay, you like the guy.  I am not crazy about him, myself.  He seems like a snake oil salesman, selling hope and change.  But I don’t “hate” him, and you still haven’t answered my question about why you “hate” Hillary.

2)     Sister: Hillary is just like Bill Clinton.  She’s too moderate and they both “triangulate”.  We don’t need another Clinton.  I’m tired of Bushes and Clintons.  We need something new.  (To her credit she didn’t use the epithet “Billary” which may have been too sexist for her.  Or she may have just been embarrassed to say that to me.)

Me: Have you seen Hillary’s policy proposals?  They are very similar to Obama’s. In some cases, particularly her health care proposal, they are more progressive than his. (I sent her one of economist Paul Krugman’s articles from the New York Times on why Hillary’s health care plan which will cover everyone is better than Obama’s, which will only cover children. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/opinion/04krugman.html?scp=25&sq=krugman+and+health+care&st=nyt  )

Sister:  Who has time to read all of these things?  Politicians never do them anyway.  He inspires people.  That’s what we need in a President.  I’m going to lose my job if you don’t quit writing all these emails and sending me all these articles.

Me:  I am just trying to find out why you “hate” Hillary so much?

3)     Sister: Hillary Clinton will do anything to get elected. She’s running a negative campaign. 

Me:  Can’t you see that that is just code for she’s an ambitious, ball-busting bitch?! What kind of sexist double standard is that?  Hillary has paid her dues.  She didn’t run for President in 2004 after only four years in the Senate.  She waited until 2008 after being elected by the state of New York with a huge majority to a second term.  Yet, Obama’s ambition is very apparent.  He has run for higher office every three years.  He is impatient to get to the highest office in the land.  And, do you really think Obama won’t do anything to get elected?  Both he and his campaign have been very negative.  He or his campaign spokespeople have said she:

·         is a “calculating, poll-tested, divisive figure”

·         “consistently” and “deliberately” misleads the American people. 

·         is “dishonest” 

·         is attempting to “deceive the American people”.  

·         is “one of the most secretive politicians in America”.

·         is “a monster”.

·         is “not being straight with the American people”.

They have also claimed that:

·         “The American people are not going to elect a president that they do not trust”. 

·         And, (probably the worse), they have said that John McCain is seen as more honest and trustworthy than Hillary Clinton. 

Obama is a master at the very negative campaigning that he and his campaign accuse Hillary of practicing.  And, though he calls her a liar, he has lied plenty in this campaign. (I sent her a New York Times news article about how he lied about a Senate bill that he claimed to have passed but didn’t regarding radioactive leaks at nuclear power plants. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/us/politics/03exelon.html?scp=3&sq=nuclear+bill&st=nyt )

Sister:  Quit sending me these emails!  Can’t we just agree to disagree? I’ll vote for her if she is nominated.  But, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

 

That, sadly, was the end of our conversation.  But from it and others with Obama supporters, as well as listening to the regular anti-Hillary rants on the “progressive” Air America talk radio, I realized something quite disturbing.  I realized that a very important pillar of Obama’s campaign strategy is exploiting the irrational hatred of Hillary Clinton.  This hatred was first brought to us by the Republicans, and it is now the rallying cry of Obama supporters.  The negative things Obama and his campaign have been saying about Hillary are 50 times worse on the blogosphere and the progressive talk stations (she’s a “bitch”, a “f**king whore”, “Billary”, “warmongering” etc.) than even that coming directly from him and his campaign.  But the license to do this, the license to spew negative and vile, often misogynistic hatred, has come from Obama and his campaign – if they can call her a divisive liar, why can’t talk-show host Randi Rhodes go a little farther and call her a whore?

 

The other strategic pillars of his campaign are 1) his ability to give inspiring speeches about change and hope, 2) his race, which legitimately brings pride to African Americans and makes white liberals feel good about their support for the first viable African American nominee and 3) his hip, trendy, youthful coolness.  None of these, in my opinion, are the best reasons to choose a President who will have the responsibility for pulling us out of war, an economic mess, a climate crisis and various other difficult, explosive foreign policy problems.  But they aren’t ugly.

 

The exploitation and encouragement of Hillary-hating by the Obama campaign, however, is ugly.  And, it is insulting not only to Hillary but to all women and particularly those who have worked hard and competed in male-dominated professions –  like politics. 

 

What is astonishing about what the Obama campaign has accomplished is that it has built so much of its support on this sexist, negative and inaccurate portrayal of Hillary Clinton, while at the same time successfully spreading the myth that it is the Clinton campaign that is negative.  And the Obama campaign couldn’t have done this without the willing participation of Obama, himself, which belies the claim that he is a “unifying” figure and that he practices “new politics”, let alone that he brings people together.  In fact, he is bringing people to his campaign by scapegoating and demonizing the “other” – the old, traditional, divisive, bitchy, lying, politics-as-usual Hillary Clinton.

 

Yet, in reality, Hillary is not only not traditional: she is, in fact, a very unusual figure in American politics – a First Lady who became a Senator and then ran for President.  How many of those have we had?  She also is not only not divisive but she has shown, as a Senator, that she can work with people who hated her and her husband when he was President.  She has healed relationships that one would expect could never be healed.

 

Women across the country are working their hearts out for Hillary, not only because they want to see this brilliant woman become the first woman President, but because they are furious at the ugly misogyny coming from the Obama camp.  And they know that the Obama campaign could not have been successful in building their support on the demonization of Hillary without the willing cooperation of a male-dominated, sexist media.  A media that rarely reports that his campaign is regularly calling her some of the worst epithets ever thrown at one Democrat by another, but one that pounces on her when she or her surrogates even mildly criticize him.  A media that doesn’t even notice that he is a Democrat, who, in attempting to tear her down, actually tears down the administration of the one Democrat since FDR, Bill Clinton, who has won two terms of office. (In his “bitter”/”clinging” remarks, Obama stated that the Clinton years were as bad for working people as the Bush years.)

 

I couldn’t talk to my sister about all of this because she wouldn’t listen.  But, I’m hoping that voters in the upcoming primaries will listen.  I’m hoping that Democrats, particularly those latte-drinking college educated Obama-leaning people will educate themselves to what is really going on in this primary election.  I’m hoping that not just women, but men with daughters, mothers, wives and sisters, men who respect women – will no longer be inspired by hatred. 

 

I’m hoping that this Democratic “family” will not stand by and watch as Obama and his campaign tear down Hillary Clinton and get away with it in the media, if not in the hearts half of the primary voters so far. 

 

There is no question that this primary campaign has alienated a lot of women.  And women are this party’s biggest block of supporters—almost 60 percent of reliable Democratic voters.  If we abandon so many women, the backbone of our party, by nominating Obama, it will be more than a family fight.  It will be a very bad time for the Democratic family – without the scores of women in local offices to answer the phones, canvass and run the ground game.  We won’t have much of a family with women walking out of the house in droves. 

 

We need these hard-working reliable “mamas” – and Hillary Clinton – much more than we need a candidate who has given his followers a license to hate – Barack Obama. 

 

Beat The Republicans

Welcome to the official Beat the Republicans blog. This blog is intended to uncover the truths about what’s going on with the Democrats and rally people to beat McCain in the general election.

We have some very strong views on this AND we want this to be a sensible discussion amoung people committed to emancipating the White House from Republican deception, corruption and yes, ultimately, the responsiblity of thousands of deaths in the 7 years we’ve endured them.

 So, let’s not get caught up in the media hype of one Candidate of another so, let’s stick with the facts and let’s be objective because we have to BEAT THE REPUBLICANS in 2008.