OPINION . Loose Canon

Obama's Balls

Will voters see strength in a skinny guy with a polite demeanor?

by Bruce Schimmel

Published: Dec 26, 2007

No one wants a wimp for a president.

So, is Karl Rove right? Is Obama "a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson"? An egghead without a yolk, a centrist with no center?

In the Philadelphia democratic smackdown last fall, the issue of Obama's testicular fortitude stole the show from the opening bell. Brian Williams baited Obama to take another whack at Hillary, after Obama had called her a "Republican" on foreign policy in The New York Times.

Asked about his attack, Obama first feints, downplaying the feud as "the most hyped fight since Rocky fought Apollo Creed." Then, he gently jabs, "Although the amazing thing is, I'm Rocky in this situation." Finally, he quickly pop-pop-pops Clinton on her NAFTA, Iraq and CIA-torture flip-flops.

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As political dustups go, it's a polite attack. Hillary can only stammer back that she's no Republican, offering, after all, that Republicans dislike her. Though on the core issue of her flip-flops, she offers no defense at all.

Yeah, Obama's a fighter. Though more a Tai Chi type than the street-scrapping sort that Rove wants him to be. And for that I'm glad.

Obama will fight, but won't do it mean, low and nasty, because he fundamentally believes that people need to get along. So, he won't make war in a way that undermines the peace.

"Politics," as Obama puts it in The Audacity of Hope, must more be than "an endless clash of armies."

Endless retribution isn't in Obama's morality, because it contradicts his take on the Constitution — the contract that keeps us together. Which is ironic, in a sense, because the Constitution is founded on cynical insight that human beings are not naturally generous or forgiving. That people, by instinct, look out for No. 1.

Still, it's a selfishness that will save us, writes Obama, because it leads us to recognize that our "own interests are inextricably linked" to others. When means finding a common ground, even with our enemies.

As a fledgling senator, Obama put his principles to the test in his first private meeting with West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd.

Byrd once wore the white hood of the KKK. But in Audacity, Obama recalls a quiet moment when the ancient senator looks him in the eye, and says, "I only have one regret, you know. The foolishness of youth. ... "

"We all have regrets, Senator," responds Obama. "We just ask that in the end, God's grace shines upon us."

Obama embraces Byrd's contradictions. The same senator who voted against the civil rights laws in the '60s, Obama reminds us, also opposed the resolution that authorized the Iraq war.

These are the complexities make people comprehensible — more human — even to their antagonists. In Audacity, Obama gives the example of the middle-aged feminist who mourns an abortion in her youth. Or the fundamentalist Christian woman who nonetheless pays for her teenage daughter's abortion.

Talking to our adversaries is not only possible, it's necessary. And this will be hard, when even peaceable people — like me, for instance — would love to throw the assholes who hijacked the presidency in jail. So that no one should ever soil the Constitution like that again.

Should Obama be president? I hope so. I hope that voters will look past a skinny guy with the polite demeanor, and see a man with a broad understanding and a steely resolve.

Certainly, all of the Democrats — with varying degrees of success — would wind down the war, restore civil liberties, scale back corporate power, and align us with others who link their nation's survival to the planet's.

But which Democrat can heal a divided nation? So far, Obama alone has the gonads to say that as a nation we can find what unites us, because we must.

(bruce@schimmel.com)

 

Comments

So, you raise the Rove, and you don't include a link to his utterances.

Who gives a fig what TurdBlossom utters?

He is nothing. And hasn't been able to view his own cajones for many a season.
by mommadona on December 26th 2007 4:16 PM

Obama’s efforts to connect to the Republican Party, specifically Bush, and Dick Chaney, of the Halliburton Company, dates back to the Presidents Grandfather, Prescott Bush, and indeed Chaney was once an executive officer of Halliburton.

The American military pounds Iraq with Artillary, bombs, and the like, destroying large sections of cities, and infra-structures, then Halliburton comes in to rebuild. Halliburton and Halliburton associated companies have raked in ten’s of billions.

Obama is just like the BIG HALIBURTAN. Haliburton has contracted to build detention centers in the U.S. similiar to the one in Quantanammo Bay, Cuba. Halliburton does nothing to earn the Two Dollars for each meal an American Serviceman in Iraq eats.

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/

Halliburton was scheduled to take control of the Dubai Ports in The United Arab Emiirate. The deal was canceled when Bush was unable to affect the transfer of the American Ports.

Now we see what some might suspect as similiar financial escapading from the Democrats.

Two years ago, Iraq’s Ministry of Electricity gave a $50 million contract to a start-up security company - Companion- owned by now-indicted businessman (TONY REZKO) Tony Rezko and a onetime Chicago cop, Daniel T. Frawley, to train Iraqi power-plant guards in the United States. An Iraqi leadership change left the deal in limbo. Now the company, Companion Security, is working to revive its contract.
Involved along with Antoin “Tony” Rezco, long time friend and neighbor of Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama, and former cop Daniel T. Frawley, is Aiham Alsammarae. Alsammarae was accused of financial corruption by Iraqi authorities and jailed in Iraq last year before escaping and returning here.

LIKE FATHER LIKE SON --
Recently, Obama's campaign staff have been vetted by the IRS to disclose his connection to the criminal money generating underworld. Besides, his connections to the REZCO MAFIA types, his up-coming tax fraud charges — Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM "PATWANG-FWEEE" and disclose Obama's MUSLIM Farrakhan mob connection to Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Its minister, and Obama's spiritual adviser, is the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. In 1982, the church launched Trumpet Newsmagazine; Wright's daughters serve as publisher and executive editor. Every year, the magazine makes awards in various categories. Last year, it gave the Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award to a man it said "truly epitomized greatness." That man is Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan and Chicago's Trinity United Church are trumpeting Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama as the second coming of the messiah. Obama should stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke "GLORK" Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek. He is MAD!!! --

OBAM YOU'RE NO JFK --

"GLORK" Obama looks like Alfred E. Newman: "Tales Calculated To Drive You." He is a MUSLIM "Glork" He's MAD!!! Alfred E. Neuman is the fictional mascot of Mad. The face had drifted through American pictography for decades before being claimed by Mad editor Harvey Kurtzman after he spotted it on the bulletin board in the office of Ballantine Books editor Bernard Shir-Cliff, later a contributor to various magazines created by Kurtzman.
Obama needs to disclose why he is a MUSLIM "PATWANG-FWEEE" and stop suppoting our intervention in IRAQ. It’s time to introduce this false, fake "GLORK" Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek.

Michelle Obama should be ashamed.

"GLORK" Michelle Obama should be ashamed of her separatist-racist connection to Farrakhan and Chicago's Trinity United Church trumpeting Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama as the second coming of the messiah. If Michelle Obama new what her husband -- the Hope-A-Dope, Fonster Monster -- Barack Obama AKA Barack Hussein Obama did in Harlem, she would wash her wide-open, Hus-suey loving MUSILM mouth out, with twenty-four (24) mule-team double-cross X-boX-BorraX. He is a MUSLIM "Glork" It’s time to introduce this false, fake "GLORK" Xerox - X box Obama and invite the self-indicting thief plagiarizing pipsqueke Xerox - X box to meet the Buffalo "GAZOWNT-GAZIKKA" Police Department Buffalo Creek. He's MAD!!!

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/
by Janet Reno on March 19th 2008 12:26 AM



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