Common Folk Using Common Sense

Trackbacked at Stop The ACLU:

Senator Barack Hussein Obama (D-IL) said Tuesday he is taking the initial step in a presidential bid that could make him the nation’s first black to occupy the White House. Speculation on a 2008 presidential run first intensified after Obama’s U.S. Senate election win in November 2004, prompting him to tell reporters: “I can unequivocally say I will not be running for national office in four years” (Scott Fornek, “Obama for president? That’s ’silly’”, Chicago Sun-Times, November 4, 2004).

Obama announced on his Web site, http://www.barackobama.com , that he was filing a presidential exploratory committee. He said he would announce more about his plans in his home state of Illinois on Feb. 10.

But who is Barack Obama? And why are we reading about his presidential aspirations a mere two years into his first term as senator?

Obama, a 45-year-old with little more than two years into his Senate term, is the most inexperienced candidate considering a run for the Democratic nomination. He quickly rose to national prominence, beginning with his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention and his election to the Senate that year, but still is an unknown quantity to many voters. He has earned a reputation as a strongly liberal Democrat on social and economic issues. He backed gay rights, abortion rights, gun control, universal health care, and tax breaks for the poor.

He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. of Alego, a village in Nyanza Province, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. His parents, a black father and a white mother, met while both were attending the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian foreign student, moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Four years later, Obama returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.

In the Senate, Obama’s liberal voting record belies the centrist themes he strikes on the stump. The liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action gives Obama a 100% voting rating – 5 points to the left of Senator Ted Kennedy, who gets a 95% grade. Yes, you read that correctly – a more liberal voting record than Ted Kennedy.

Among his campaign contributors are George Soros, People for the American Way, pro-abortion groups, and teacher’s unions.

Obama backed a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, supported international funding for groups that provide abortion, and opposed reauthorization of the Patriot Act. And a Congressional Quarterly review found Obama has a near-perfect partisan voting record, casting his lot with the Democratic Party line 97% of the time – higher than Clinton and dead even with Sen. John Kerry (Mass.).

He has voted against extending the Bush tax cuts on capital gains and dividends, and he has voted against permanently repealing the Death Tax.

He opposes privatizing Social Security, and he opposed any bans on partial birth abortions.

He voted against drilling in ANWR, voted against confirmation of Sam Alito and John Roberts as chief justice, and voted against extending the PATRIOT Act’s wiretap provision.

But one thing Obama has going for him – and it’s a powerful tool – is the US media. Nearly every journalist and photog is falling over themselves to stand in awe before Obama. Many are already convinced that Obama is the defacto heir apparent to the White House. The media rushes to fawn over a young man with far less life experience, less national political experience, and less business experience than any other Presidential contender.

He hasn’t done anything in the Senate to distinguish himself. He’s simply Black and Articulate, and to the media this is something special.

There will only be two Democratic candidates for the Presidency in 2008: one will be Hillary Clinton, and the other will be everyone else. Her choices are to either bring in Obama as her Vice President, or engage in a brutal and bloody campaign.

Barack, Obama, Democrat, liberal

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