Lessig

Glen Ford at blackagendareport.com (http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=491&Itemid=1) makes the claim (probably true, but not sure of the context) that Obama took down from his site this document in 2003 when the war was popular, and then began touting it again as the war's popularity declined.

Joseph.

Thanks for the link. Obama's opposition to the war certainly faded following the invasion, esp. when since he joined the senate. Still, I think that the Ford article is misleading given the statements you linked to. Keep in mind that Ford is attacking Obama from the left.

Support for the war in the US seems to have peaked just after the invasion & declined since. Whether or not the the "pro-war chorus" was in full swing in 2002 is irrelevant to the state of public opinion at the time: they were trying to *change* public opinion. They didn't have a great deal of success, but they did manage to squeak it by. So public support peaked just after invasion and has declined ever since. In 2002, the war was still largely unpopular: the US public had not yet been scared into it.

I didn't just see the word "thru" twice in that transcript. Please tell me I didn't.

I don't like it when people use all canned, all staged material. Why can't they go up on stage and just talk their mind, talk freely?

Ok, this is the wrong place to rant about this, since everyone is doing this. It appears ... and this speech is just an excellent example of a thoughtfully compiled collection of psychological tricks and careful wording. Why is our society so full of shit and nobody seems to care or even notice??

I'm sorry, but talk is cheep.

We've seen time and time again from Bush; unfunded mandates, lip service to becoming energy independent, more lip service on emission reductions, the chiding of foreign governments for lack of transparency and freedom while at home he takes away ours. Unfortunately all three of our top candidates are weak on action.

I am watching MTP on NBC and I wonder what if

Obama got Bloomberg to be his VP.

This would drive Clintons off the wagon. I love it.

Let us hope Obama beats the two Clintons. But, I know, this is an impossible reality.

The power of Clintons' attack machine is that you will vote for it, even when you do not want to do so. The reason is race, gender, and ethnicity baiting.

Thanks a lot for the US insides. It is quite interesting to see the European reports about the race for the White House and then to compare it to those topics that you raise here.

One should consider the context of this speech before claiming that it proves anything about his vision or decision making ability. The fact is that he prepared and delivered an anti war speech at an anti war rally attended by anti war people. In my oppinion, he didn't exactly stick his neck out here. We can only speculate what his ACTIONS would have been had he actually been a member of the senate, had to sit in on intelligence briefings, and had to cast a vote on behalf of the people of Illinois regarding the authorization of military action against Sadam Hussein. And one of those "present" votes he's so fond of casting would not have been acceptable in that case.
Barack's anti war position in 2002 was, in effect, his "political lottery ticket." It didn't cost him anything at the time. He didn't have anything to lose by taking that position. And if he happened to be right, the payoff would be huge for his future political career. It was a highly calculated POLITICAL move by a CAREER POLITICIAN and don't let a career politician fool you into thinking that he's someone who can come in and change the way the political game is played. He won't.

Obama made his anti war position clear BEFORE the invasion of Iraq, which was the appropriate time. After the war began, the Bush labeled anyone who was against the war "unpatriotic", and he ruined the lives and professions of many people who spoke against him. Perhaps it was McCarthy era fear that led senators and millions of other Americans (including Obama) to support the war, post invasion. They were simply afraid to speak against it.

@A Democrat: While I agree with your sentiment that Sen. Obama's speech was merely pretty words freed from the responsibility of action and delivered before a pre-selected, sympathetic audience, I do need to correct you on your use of "19 days" in your comment.

The article Professor Lessig links to is a reprint of Sen. Obama's speech as a column in a Chicago newspaper on October 30, 2002. However, the actual speech and rally as reported on Sen. Obama's website and linked to by @Roger above was on October 2, 2002, the same day the Authorization to Use Military Force resolution was introduced in the House of Representatives (HJRes. 114), and a week after the corresponding bill was introduced in the Senate (SJRes 45). Still, the pundits and commentators, protesters and supporters, did not wait for the Congress to formally introduce the issue before starting their arguments, and an astute political weatherman such as Sen. Obama would have had plenty of time to dress himself appropriately for his forecast.

There were many other Senators and Representatives (sadly not a majority) who opposed the resolutions, but it doesn't appear that most of them felt that this one distinguishing position -- along with a record and platform virtually indistinguishable from most other Democratic candidates -- was enough to sustain a campaign for the US Presidency.

It seems to me it pretty easy to make such a speec at an anti-war rally, 19 days after the congress had to cast a meaningful vote. That's 19 days of headlines, 19 days of pundit commentary, and 19 days to measure which way the political winds were blowing.

This is just phase I of the Obama campaign: base building and the democratic nomination. Phase II: details the national campaign. His campaign is a evolutionary process that will become more and more focused on hard policy outlines.

Obama very definitely DID remove that speech from his web site for a good six or seven weeks at least in the spring and early summer of 2003, when pro-war sentiment was running heavy, when he had already locked up the antiwar vote for the primary, and was tacking right to please his friends at the DLC and his campaign contributors. I know because I caught it, wrote an article on it, and Obama had to respond to it. I know because we forced him to put it back up again. Here is a recap of that exchange with links to our original dialog with Obama on the subject.

We forced him to replace the speech and to remove his DLC tattoos, his formal affiliation with the right wing corporate pocket of the Democratic party. Read it here.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=529&Itemid=1

Ruth Calabria, Chairperson

We endorse Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.

This is the most important election America will ever have, possibly the last if Barack Obama is not elected.

The Evolutionary Party derives its politics from the equation for evolution shown on the flag that has been in the textbooks for the last eighty years. A mathematical elaboration of it supported by data ranging from chemical kinetics to the evening news indicates that our “war on terror” is slowly but surely escalating to World War III, a truly terrifying thought. For that reason we support Barack Obama, for he is the only real anti-war candidate.

Hillary? Before Hillary came Bill. Let us recall Bill Clinton and his lovely first lady with a clear eye. This all smiling couple sang their song of health care so sweetly to the public but delivered, not on an increase in medical protection, but an increase in prison building and in the number of police roaming the streets, federally paid, looking for a reason to hassle the public and put those who get annoyed rather than cowed into one of those new Clinton prisons. And we accepted it all because it came from such a nice American couple with such nice smiles. Hillary, show us that your showboat is something other than a total fake.

What the Clintons did very much pleased the conservatives, who believe in lock ‘em up law and order because our laws are made by and for the eternal betterment of the moneyed class in America. What the Clintons did took America to the highest per-capita prison population in the world, a statistic historically associated with police states like Stalinist Russia and apartheid South Africa. No, the Evolutionary Party is not saying that America is a police state, if it were, you’d have heard about it on the evening news.

The Clinton presidency also ended social protection for out of work people, again quite pleasing the conservatives. The Clintons ended Lyndon Baines Johnson’s war on poverty and put all the homeless people you don’t see on TV onto the streets of Las Vegas and Sacramento where they are as thick as flies and can’t be missed unless you are blind. As some in the media actually are. Have you ever noticed Carol Costello’s eyes? Right out of the Stepford Wives. She is blind. You are sure of that by what she and the rest of the show your tits newscasters don’t say. Nothing that you actually see on the streets of America and on its busses and in its workplaces is ever talked about on TV.

And you have to wonder who Carole is banging for in the front office. We are not picking on her for that reason, though. Working women all across America have to fuck for their bosses, one way or another, to get ahead in life. So it is very unlikely that Carole is alone as a CNN down on her knees newscastrix. No, we are picking on Carole and on Anderson and on the rest of the well paid greasy mouths on TV for not seeing the more stark realities we lesser people have to live with.

And to all you middle class who don’t care if the Clintons brought us the hoards of homeless beggars that don’t exist in your life, don’t turn your head so soon. It could be you and your family next. Either as one of the homeless, when the economic realities of our trillion dollar war rob you of your job and retirement savings when the market crashes. Or as a victim of the homeless when their rage at being kicked by the police on top of being starved reaches the mass murder point. As it has in a number of other sectors in America where control is abusive, as at work and in our well policed schools.

On a lighter note, Hillary does have a few things she can be proud of. She is a most talented actress and a profoundly adept social climber, our American Evita. But whatever Hillary’s personal accomplishments, she is never going to go against the wishes of the money class that created her and Bill and supported them as their adorable political puppets. Hillary would not show her tax returns, as Obama asked, because they would show the largess showered on the Clintons by the moneyed class. No, Hillary is not going to stop this war, whatever she may say to get elected and star her next movie: Figurehead President II.

Of course, there are those of you that think that Hillary would never lie to us. Bill said he would never lie to us. And he said it so well that I yet don’t believe he lied to us about Monica. Monica who? That is how good an actor Bill is. He’s even a better actor than Brad Pitt. One night Bill crawled into Angelina’s bedroom in Beverly Hills with a cigar in his mouth. Hey, Angelina, he said, my wife’s going to run for president this year. Open your legs and give us your vote. Pass the popcorn, please. It’ll be another four years of that movie, but with Hillary smoking the cigar.

Of course, transgressions are relative. Who is not totally revulsed by the smell of a public rest room fused to the Bible squeezing, boy hustling conservative senator from Idaho? Nobody has caught Bill at that yet. Still, what character is there in a first family when the head of the most powerful nation on earth sticks a penile object, not even his own, up some college kid’s vagina? If this were a movie, would they play the Star Spangled Banner during this scene?

And doesn’t it make you wonder about the guy’s wife? Does any sane female over the age of 22 really think Hillary felt bad about Bill and Monica? Behind all the media hype that protects those who help control the little people, you have to wonder:

A.) Is Hillary is lesbian, a married one, not that unusual in modern America. If Hillary was mad about anything with Monica, it was that she didn’t get a shot at her too. Watch one of Hillary’s lovers surface soon to clarify her tastes as to penile object.

B.) The smiling Clintons are so phony and so slimy underneath that one would not be surprised to find that the inarguably unconfident and possibly mildly retarded Chelsea Clinton was the product of her pervert parents abusing her when she was four years old, the age she seems to be stuck in. Certainly there is as much truth in this outrageous conjecture as the Clintons being good people because they go to church on Sunday. No, what the Clintons are is not good, but likable. Likable is a banana split. You just like how it tastes. You don’t need a reason. The Clintons are an imitation banana split, very likeable, like artificial sweetener that causes cancer eight years down the line.

You can trust what a Clinton says like you can trust what a Bush says. That whole family, George I, George II, Lady Barbara and Lady Laura, are all great actors too. And isn’t it interesting that the Bush daughters, Jenna and what’s her name, are as unconfident and inept as Chelsea. Makes you wonder if Bush uses a cigar too. But on Lady Laura, the Virgin Mary of conservatives?

True, this skit by the one writer’s guild writer who didn’t get rehired is a bit insane. But there are a lot of people around today that are actually insane, not the least of whom are the conservatives, all of which are unbalanced emotionally because of their castration in childhood from the pains of physical punishment and strict obedience. They are inherently defective however much their endless charades from Senate podiums and on Fox News try to hide it. And dangerous when they have weapons in their grasp.

If you want the war and the police state to end, vote for Barack Obama. Not for Hillary, who is so self-serving and devious that you wouldn’t be surprised if she teamed up with Huckabee as VP on a national reconciliation ticket. Or some such curve ball the moneyed class would use to block Obama from getting in and ending our descent into irreversible totalitarianism and worldwide war. Hopefully Obama will not be removed by assassination.

Who are we to say such dark things?

matrix-evolutionsdotcom

Easily duped again, America.

It's easy to say that one is against the war when it isn't their decision to make. It's easy say that "dumb wars" are a disappointment when no one's asking you to cast your vote. It's easy to feel secure in your own righteousness and your own skin when it isn't your state that was terrorised--3000 of your constituents that never made it home. It's easy to say "no" to something--whichever war he meant--when History won't hold you accountable.

Hillary got unlucky in this one. She dared to win her Senate seat and then do something with it.

When and if this man makes it into office, we will see for ourselves the breadth and deepth of his vision; we will see his capabilities laid bare. And when they fall far short of what they've promised to be, we will feel, once again, fooled and "bamboozled" by a man who knew just the lies to tell.

barracks speech, wow he's a good liar. he's been listening to the preacher for 20 years. he is blowing smoke up our butt for sure. wake up america!

I forgot that Obama was elected after the war began...I'd have to say that this speech is something that could easily be buried if the war was successful and his remarks towards Saudi Arabia and Egypt are quite hawkish... There is a HUGE difference between saying no in a small column vs. a "nay" vote on the original measure on the Senate floor and I doubt he will be the one to bring that up.

It is better to have someone who takes an opinion (McCain or Hillary) then one who's afraid to do so (see: his record in the Illinois legislature) and Monday morning quarterbacks the outcome.