Obama demystified
by kirk , 13 pages, modified on
This is not an anti-Obama notebook. Rather, this is a study of what real CHANGE (as opposed to pure rousing utterance of the word) the man has brought about. I mostly support him and his policies as a politician, but I have been mystified by his messiah status. Hence the need for demystification.
  1. The Two Obamas - NYTimes.com
    Barack Obama is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe him.

    ...at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/opinion/20brooks.html?em&ex=1214107200&en=98dbf7f8bae1fe38&ei=5087%0A
    1
  2. Obama in Senate: Star Power, Minor Role - New York Times
    “I’ve been very blessed,” Mr. Obama told the crowd assembled in March 2006. “Keynote speaker at the Democratic convention. The cover of Newsweek. My book made the best-seller list. I just won a Grammy for reading it on tape. “Really, what else is there to do?” he said, his smile now broad. “Well, I guess I could pass a law or something.”
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/us/politics/09obama.html?pagewanted=1&ref=politics
    2
  3. Obama's fundraisers include big fish -- chicagotribune.com
    But the Obama fundraising operation provides a contrast to an image that the campaign has ceaselessly cultivated as a movement powered by everyday Americans.

    Sixty percent of the Obama campaign's funds come from people who have given at least $1,000, the kind of donors who are most often recruited by bundlers. Less than 30 percent of his contributions came from people who gave less than $200.
    http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-070725obama,1,5894874.story?coll=chi_tab01_layout&ctrack=2&cset=true
    3
  4. The Politics of Spare Change - washingtonpost.com
    Mr. Obama had an opportunity here to demonstrate that he really is a different kind of politician, willing to put principles and the promises he has made above political calculation. He made a different choice, and anyone can understand why: He's going to raise a ton of money.

    Fine. Politicians do what politicians need to do. But they ought to spare us the self-congratulatory back-patting while they're doing it.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/19/AR2008061903026.html
    4
  5. For Obama, a Pragmatist’s Shift Toward the Center - NYTimes.com
    Mr. Obama is an introspective candidate, and perhaps the best analyst of his own political style. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/us/27obama.html
    5
  6. The Obama Agenda - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
    Mr. Obama looks even more centrist now than he did before wrapping up the nomination. Most notably, he has outraged many progressives by supporting a wiretapping bill that, among other things, grants immunity to telecom companies for any illegal acts they may have undertaken at the Bush administration’s behest.

    The candidate’s defenders argue that he’s just being pragmatic — that he needs to do whatever it takes to win, and win big, so that he has the power to effect major change. But critics argue that by engaging in the same “triangulation and poll-driven politics” he denounced during the primary, Mr. Obama actually hurts his election prospects, because voters prefer candidates who take firm stands.

    In any case, what about after the election? The Reagan-Clinton comparison suggests that a candidate who runs on a clear agenda is more likely to achieve fundamental change than a candidate who runs on the promise of change but isn’t too clear about what that change would involve.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/opinion/30krugman.html?em&ex=1215057600&en=3c6e21ae1e37d3e7&ei=5087%0A
    6
  7. Obama’s Money Class
    When you break it out by individual companies, you find that employees of Goldman Sachs gave more to Obama than workers of any other employer. The Goldman Sachs geniuses are followed by employees of the University of California, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Harvard and Google. At many of these workplaces, Obama has a three- or four-to-one fund-raising advantage over McCain.

    When he is swept up in rhetorical fervor, Obama occasionally says that his campaign is 90 percent funded by small donors. He has indeed had great success with small donors, but only about 45 percent of his money comes from donations of $200 or less.

    The real core of his financial support is something else, the rising class of information age analysts. Once, the wealthy were solidly Republican. But the information age rewards education with money. There are many smart high achievers who grew up in liberal suburbs around San Francisco, L.A. and New York, went to left-leaning universities like Harvard and Berkeley and took their values with them when they became investment bankers, doctors and litigators.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/opinion/01brooks.html?em&ex=1215144000&en=2326b635599ad84d&ei=5087%0A
    7
  8. Obama Might ‘Refine’ Iraq Timeline
    Senator Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot sustain a long-term military presence in Iraq, but added that he would be open to “refine my policies” about a timeline for withdrawing troops after meeting with American military commanders during a trip to Iraq later this month.

    http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/obama-open-to-refine-iraq-withdrawal-timeline/index.html?hp
    8
  9. The New and Not Improved Barack Obama - Editorial - NYTimes.com
    We are not shocked when a candidate moves to the center for the general election. But Mr. Obama’s shifts are striking because he was the candidate who proposed to change the face of politics, the man of passionate convictions who did not play old political games.

    There are still vital differences between Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain on issues like the war in Iraq, taxes, health care and Supreme Court nominations. We don’t want any “redefining” on these big questions. This country needs change it can believe in.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/opinion/04fri1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
    9
  10. The Long Run - Obama’s Organizing Years, Guiding Others and Finding Himself - Series - NYTimes.com
    Barack Obama’s time as an organizer in Chicago has figured prominently in his life story, though it is clear that the benefit of those years to Mr. Obama dwarfs what he accomplished.

    Mr. Obama had risen to executive director of the Developing Communities group, but the demanding hours, small victories and low pay took a toll on him, and he decided to leave.

    “ ‘We are not making large-scale change, and I want to be involved in doing that,’ ” Mr. Kellman said Mr. Obama had told him.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/07/us/politics/07community.html
    10
  11. Op-Ed Columnist - Lurching With Abandon - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
    Senator Barack Obama is not just tacking gently toward the center. He’s zigging so fast it’s guaranteed to cause disillusion, if not whiplash.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
    11
  12. Where’s the Landslide?
    Barack Obama’s ability to stand apart means that people on almost all sides of any issue can see parts of themselves reflected in his eyes. But it does make him hard to place.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/opinion/05brooks.html?em
    12
  13. Big-Dollar Donors Are Major Force in Obama Campaign - NYTimes.com
    Barack Obama’s campaign cites its volume of small donations, but a third of his record haul has come from donations of $1,000 and up.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/06/us/politics/06bundlers.html?hp
    13

Similar Notebooks to
Obama demystified

ELECTIONS 2008 (15) by josh

Most Viewed Notebooks
  (last 7 days)

Ice Creams (76) by lizagiga
ClassVoteSigma (67) by lizagiga
Pandemics (48) by byroncallas
Free summer events in bay area (16) by nancy
Presidents (141) by dmoz
Obama not Muslim (10) by sunilpaul
liza's looks (180) by lizagiga
Venture Capital Firms (CleanTech) (15) by CleanTech_Human_Capital
iLEONARDO.com PRESS (31) by josh
central florida - orlando (12) by kirk

Latest Notebooks

Virtual Worlds Research (12) by ckpicker
Power Generaton - Solar - Photovoltaics (companies and research) (1) by CleanTechies
Power Generation - Solar - Solar Thermal (companies and research (1) by CleanTechies
Services - CleanTech Financing - Project Finance (3) by CleanTechies
Services - CleanTech Financing - Venture Capital (1) by CleanTechies
Media X Seminars (3) by MediaX
Exercise for the Elderly (2) by rmchen
Services - Demand Response (1) by CleanTechies
Power Generation - Solar Companies (1) by CleanTechies
Energy Infrastructure - Intelligent Network Devices (1) by CleanTechies

More notebooks...