abotron's Blog

Obama's Nuclear Options

2008-08-22T06:03:33Z

The right-wing smear machine talks a whole lot about unsavory Obama associations. (Wright, who I actually think is hardly that big a deal, and Ayers, which is total BS association.) But we never hear about McCain's "October Surprise".

Here's just a few WMDs Senator Obama could lob right before the election.

G. Gordon Liddy

Along with E. Howard Hunt, Liddy masterminded the first break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate building in 1972. The subsequent cover-up of the Watergate scandal led to Nixon's resignation in 1974; Liddy served four and a half years in prison for his role in the burglary. He later became a radio talk show host. On August 26, 1994, Liddy told the violent Branch Dividian cult, "Now if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests." ... "They've got a big target on there, ATF. Don't shoot at that, because they've got a vest on underneath that. Head shots, head shots.... Kill the sons of bitches." And he's best friends with John McCain.

Good counter to: William Ayers ads.

Campaign Manager Rick Davis

Lobbied on behalf of Victor Yanukovich, the Kremlin-backed candidate in Ukraine's 2006 election suspected of widespread ballot-box stuffing, violent vote suppression, and accused of plotting the poisoning and consequent facial paralysis of his Western-backed opponent, Victor Yuschenko.

Power shot: John McCain says Barack Obama is 'oddly in sync with the Kremlin'. Nope, sorry, that would be John McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis.

Chief Economic Advisor Phil Gramm

Passed into law the Enron loophole while his wife was on Enron's board, allowing speculators to drive up gas prices. Retired and then lobbied on behalf of UBS, who's leadership are under FBI investigation for marketing illegal tax evasion schemes to customers. (Go to wikipedia, there are all kinds of illegal dealing this company is under investigation for.) Said America has become "a nation of whiners" who are in "a mental recession".

Power shot: John McCain forgot how many homes he owns. He thinks $4 million makes you rich. The man who wrote his economic policy says we're "a nation of whiners", "in a mental recession", even after passing the Enron loophole to allow speculators to drive up gas prices. Tell John McCain to fire Phil Gramm. Tell John McCain to rewrite his plan for the economy with someone who doesn't think we're whiners.

Chief Foreign Policy Advisor Charlie Black

Black is Washington's most powerful lobbyist, a top hand in Reagan's campaigns and the one who first recruited Lee Atwater into the ranks. Nothing would be more a coup-de-tat for the Campaign For Change than a full-out assault on the lobbyist of lobbyists, the King of Scumbags, Mr. Charlie Black. His clients include such unsavory figures as Jonas Sevimby, Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto Sese Seko, and many others. None of these, however, are more unsavory than the recently revealed fact that Charlie Black lobbied on behalf of the murderous military junta of Burma. A close second and third are Black's lobbying work for informer-turned-Iranian spy Achmed "Curveball" Chalabi as well as the scandal-plagued Blackwater contractors.

Power shot: There's oh so many ways to play this. Black is a goldmaine of scary associations. But here's a really nasty ad Obama could run on the eve of the election.--Meet Charlie Black, John McCain's Chief Foreign Policy Advisor. Charlie Black is a long-time friend of John McCain. Charlie Black has also been a lobbyist for the murderous regimes of Jonas Sevimby and Mobuto Sese Seko, as well as the murderous military junta of Burma. Here's a visual aid. Tell John McCain to fire Charlie Black and hire a Chief Foreign Policy Advisor who will put America first.

That's a real eye-opener!

Foreign Policy Advisor Randy Scheunemann

Lobbies on behalf of Georgia. (Nothing doing.) Lobbied on behalf of Achmed Chalabi. (Bingo!)

Power shot(this is killer): Six years ago, an Iraqi national named Achmed Chalabi was paid by the Bush administration to give pages of evidence to U.S. intelligence showing Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Only one problem. . . Almost all of it was a lie. And who first supported paying Chalabi to lie to the American people? John McCain. He called Chalabi "a patriot who has the best interests of his country at heart.” And even though Chalabi is now suspected of spying on behalf of Iran, both of John McCain's top foreign policy advisors went to lobby for him. John McCain aided and abetted a liar and a traitor. America paid the price.

Kathleen Sebelius: My Guilty Reasoning

2008-06-14T13:38:31Z

I've been advocating Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius for VP for a while now.

Part of the reasoning behind Sebelius is that she is well-qualified. She has served in elected office for 22 years. She served in the Kansas House of Representatives for 8 years. She then stood up to Blue-Cross Blue-Shield as Kansas Insurance Commissioner by blocking their attempts to buy up insurance carriers in Kansas. She served in that capacity for 8 years. As governor she eliminated a $1.1 billion debt without raising taxes.

Now I must admit the more nefarious and, to my mind, less idealistic reason why I favor Sebelius. It boils down to: I don't like Hillary Clinton.

Hillary is a power unto herself, that is undeniable. She represented roughly half the party. She also, in my opinion, has the remarkable ability to make her most diehard supporters just ignore her constant dishonesty and the constant racial references she, her husband, and her associates kept throwing around(hint: start with Bill Shaheen and "Is Obama A Drug Dealer?" and it's a long long timeline of covert race-baiting that culminated in the overt race-baiting of Geraldine Ferraro). She has the ability to have her top surrogate, Mark Penn, deem half of this nation as "insignificant" day-after-day memo after memo to the point of parody, and then pivot to comparing the self-inflicted Michigan and Florida debacles to Selma, Seneca Falls, and Zimbabwe. Her top surrogates bashed and insulted every state she didn't win, calling Iowa nothing but a mayor's race, implying that South Carolina was insignificant because the black guy always wins South Carolina, suing to stop the at-large precincts in Nevada. And can we all agree that whatever the independent merits of both Florida and Michigan's cases, the Clinton position was highly disingenuous and hypocritical given that they agreed with the original position of the RBC(I think they were given a gift, myself).

There were moments during the primary where I agreed with Peggy Noonan when she likened Hillary to "a political Rasputin", a miserable creature that haunts the Earth with its malice, refusing through bulletwounds and multiple glasses of cyanide and blows to the head with a baseball bat and attempted cremation to JUST FRICKIN DIE. (read about the bizarre death of Rasputin on wikipedia) I truly cannot stand Hillary Clinton. These past three months, all I've wanted was for her to just go away. After having Clinton put us all through this crap, she should be nowhere near the ticket. But to me, that is not enough. As long as Clinton holds an independent power base in the Democratic Party, she will always have the ability to undermine Obama.

Therefore, Barack Obama must destroy Hillary Clinton.

No, not personally. Senator Clinton will continue to serve in her capacities. Rather, she must be destroyed in the realm of presidential politics. The ground beneath her must be rendered inert so that she has no independent power-base to run on again. Barack Obama must finish the political coup he has started by wrenching away Clinton's base of support and rendering her irrelevant. He must make Hillary Clinton a has-been.

I think you can now see that this is a major reason why I'm a fan of Sebelius. I see nominating her as not merely a shot-across-the-bow but a wholesale power-play that over time will solidify Obama's power in the party and dissipate the Clintons'. I suspect a faction of Clinton support will be outraged and resist this nomination. I also suspect that, as with Obama's nomination, these holdouts will eventually be over-powered and overruled, and they will be forced to submit to the new reality that Kathleen Sebelius, not Hillary Clinton, will be the first woman elected to the White House.

Pretty crazy, I know, but bear with me.

What we are witnessing is a bloodless political coup. The first stage of this coup was Obama winning the nomination and gaining enough influence to force the Clinton camp to concede the race. The second stage in this political coup was consolidating the DNC into Obama's Chicago operations, making Obama's facilities the center of gravity in the Democratic Party. The third stage is what I am proposing: Put Sebelius on the ticket and consolidate Hillary's base under the Obama banner.

Question: Does wanting this to happen make me evil?

A Lesson In Framing: Reverend Wright

2008-05-03T05:21:41Z

An interviewer asks: "Senator Obama, why did you not leave Reverend Wright's church when you heard about these statements. What does it say about your judgment that you affiliated yourself with Reverend Wright even though you knew he had controversial views?"

Reframing the issue: "Well, I would say that it is less an issue of judgment and more an issue of loyalty. If you are doing God's work here on Earth, feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, healing the sick, as I have felt Reverand Wright has been for so many years, then you will have my loyalty and I will do whatever I can to defend your honor regardless of what controversial views you hold in private. But if you go off the reservation and try to publicly promote the ridiculous view that Louis Farrakhan is a great man or the government created AIDs, and then try to turn me into a proxy for your absurd views, then you are no longer serving a higher calling and I will no longer give you my loyalty or defend you. And I hope everyone who works in my campaign takes a lesson from that example."

Why is this a great response? First, it turns an issue(judgment) into a virtue(loyalty). Second, it sets a clear rationale for why Senator Obama acted as he did. Third, it broadens the discussion by making a broader point about how loyalty belongs to those who serve the broader cause(God, or in the latter case, the campaign).

This is how Senator Obama should discuss Reverend Wright every time he comes up.

The Best of Obama

2008-03-28T08:04:24Z

I wanted to put together a post full of some of my favorite off-the-cuff Youtube moments of Obama on the stump. (Off-the-cuff and on-the-stump mean the same thing, don't they?) He can be a pretty funny and(at times) goofy guy. So, without further ado:

The Best of Obama

"Well, that was the point."-in response to, Did you inhale?

"Well Hillary, I'm looking forward to you advising me as well."-Des Moines Register Debate, in response to Hillary cackling at the Obama question, With so many former Clinton advisors on your staff, how will you make a clean break from the policies of the past?

"They don't put presidents on money until well after. . . you're dead. So I don't want to be on money any time soon."-speaking to a young supporter in Audubon, Iowa

"We're all waiting, just waiting. . . waiting to find out about Harry and Voldemort and all those folks."-on the final Harry Potter book

"I just want to point out, I had no warmups. I did it on a dare--people were skeptical. . . one shot--straight through. That's how you perform under pressure."-after making a 3-pointer at a gym in South Carolina

"See, if I had gone last, I'd have known what the game was. I could've said, 'My biggest weakness. . . I love to help old ladies cross the street! Sometimes they don't want to be helped--it's terrible!'"-in Las Vegas, commenting on Edwards' and Clinton's debate response to the question, What's your biggest weakness?

"I don't know and I don't presume to know. What I do know is, there is life here on Earth, and that we're not attending to life here on Earth. . . as president, those(senior citizens and kids) are the people I will be attending to first. (pause) There may be some other folks on their way."-in response to the Russert question, Do you believe there is life beyond our planet?

"To prepare for this debate, I rode the bumper cars at the state fair."-one of the ABC debates, after 20-minutes of ganging-up on

I know I'm missing some good ones, but these ones stick out in my mind. Look for them on Youtube!