Senator Obama VS Senator Clinton

[Ghost]

I was looking at the foreign policy stuff that each of them has been putting forward, and something I saw today concerns me a great deal. The part that worried me initially was Obama's statement that he wants a blanket withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but it tied into another statement he made (as reported by Reuter's):



Now I follow foreign affairs - especially the war on terror - with interest, but I thought I'd open the floor to outside opinions.

Does anyone here want to guess what it might mean to BOTH:

( a ) Withdraw all of our troops from Iraq
( b ) Attack inside Pakistan without government cooperation

In order to make a more clear point of this, what do you suppose it would do for the War on Terrorism to abandon all ground in Iraq AND attack the only strategically placed "ally" we have in the area?


Obama's horrible lack of experience (understanding?) of foreign policy shines through, and it makes me wonder ever more what the hell Ghost is talking about in terms of Obama being exactly the kind of guy we need...

The point about Obama being black and the internation implications of his election have been discussed in the media and on the news. Its not some new out there idea ive just come up with and im not going to waste a ton of time going over what is already known.

As for these questions, the second part is interesting. You assumed he is talking about attacking Pakistan, whereas the news has covered this in depth and there has been mention of this happening anyway under the current administration.
Do you really think hes talking about attacking Pakistan?
Or are you just twisting it to mean that because it suits your argument.

He is quite clearly talking about attacking the huge terrorist network that is there which, if you watch the news and endless documentaries on CNN about it, is out of Pakistani control( and therefore out of control).
I dont get where the it suddenly becomes attacking Pakistan. Its been done to death on tv already.

[Hardball]

Clinton spending worries supporters
Can struggles be traced to lavish spending on accommodations, advisers?
By Michael Luo, Jo Becker and Patrick Healy
The New York Times
updated 11:26 p.m. ET, Thurs., Feb. 21, 2008
Nearly $100,000 went for party platters and groceries before the Iowa caucuses, even though the partying mood evaporated quickly. Rooms at the Bellagio luxury hotel in Las Vegas consumed more than $25,000; the Four Seasons, another $5,000. And top consultants collected about $5 million in January, a month of crucial expenses and tough fund-raising.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s latest campaign finance report, published Wednesday night, appeared even to her most stalwart supporters and donors to be a road map of her political and management failings. Several of them, echoing political analysts, expressed concerns that Mrs. Clinton’s spending priorities amounted to costly errors in judgment that have hamstrung her competitiveness against Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.

The high-priced senior consultants to Mrs. Clinton, of New York, have emerged as particular targets of complaints, given that they conceived and executed a political strategy that has thus far proved unsuccessful.

The firm that includes Mark Penn, Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategist and pollster, and his team collected $3.8 million for fees and expenses in January; in total, including what the campaign still owes, the firm has billed more than $10 million for consulting, direct mail and other services, an amount other Democratic strategists who are not affiliated with either campaign called stunning.

High-priced help
Howard Wolfson, the communications director and a senior member of the advertising team, earned nearly $267,000 in January. His total, including the campaign’s debt to him, tops $730,000.

The advertising firm owned by Mandy Grunwald, the longtime media strategist for both Mrs. Clinton and Bill Clinton, the former president, has collected $2.3 million in fees and expenses for production costs, and is still owed another $240,000.

“Fees and payments are in line with industry standards,” Mr. Wolfson said. “Spending priorities have been consistent with overall strategic goals.”

But some Democrats are now asking if the money spent on a campaign that appears to be sputtering — $106 million so far — was worth it.

"It’s easy to be critical, but had she won Iowa, none of this would have mattered. It wouldn’t have mattered what she spent because money would have come pouring in,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant and a veteran of Mr. Clinton’s successful 1996 re-election bid. “But the fact that she did not has made everyone focus on where the dollars went — and where they think the money should’ve gone.”


Both candidates spending big
Mrs. Clinton came into January with a cash advantage over Mr. Obama, with about $19 million available for the primary, compared with about $13 million for him. She wound up spending at roughly the same rate as Mr. Obama, about a million dollars a day, but because she performed dismally compared to him in raising money, she ended the month essentially in the red and was forced to lend her campaign $5 million, while he had $19 million for the coming contests.

Over all, Mrs. Clinton has spent more than $35 million on media, polling and consulting. A comparison with Mr. Obama’s spending is difficult because of the ways the campaigns labeled expenses, but it appears he spent about $40 million in those areas.

In other notable expenditures during the lean month of January, Mrs. Clinton paid to $275,000 to Sunrise Communications, a South Carolina firm that was supposed to turn out black voters for her and collected nearly $800,000 in total from her campaign. She lost that state to Mr. Obama by a wide margin. Even small expenses piled up quickly in January: the campaign spent more than $11,000 on pizza and $1,200 on Dunkin’ Donuts runs.


Mr. Penn, the chief strategist, said in an interview that, since 2001, he no longer owned any part of the political consulting firm of Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates. He said the firm’s fees were capped at $20,000 a month and added that the “great bulk” of the overall payments went for direct mail.

He added, “I have no administrative control whatsoever of the campaign and do not participate in any purchasing or even budget decisions in any way.”

Joe Trippi, who was a senior adviser to John Edwards’s presidential campaign, said he believed that the Clinton team had made two fundamental errors in its spending strategy.


Different fundraising strategies
First, he argued, Mrs. Clinton built a top-down fund-raising operation that relied on a core group of donors to write checks early on for the maximum amount, $4,600 for the primary and the general election, which left few of them to go back to when money became tight. Mr. Obama, by contrast, focused on building a network of small donors whose continued ability to give has been essential to his success this winter.

And second, Mr. Trippi said, the Clinton campaign spent money as though the race were going to be over after a handful of states had voted and was not prepared for a contest that would stretch for months.

“The problem is she ran a campaign like they were staying at the Ritz-Carlton,” Mr. Trippi said. “Everything was the best. The most expensive draping at events. The biggest charter. It was like, ‘We’re going to show you how presidential we are by making our events look presidential.’ ”

For instance, during the week before the Jan. 19 caucuses in Nevada, the Clinton campaign spent more than $25,000 for rooms at the Bellagio in Las Vegas; nearly $5,000 was spent at the Four Seasons in Las Vegas that week. Some staff members also stayed at Planet Hollywood nearby.

Trend seen in previous campaigns
From the start of the campaign, some donors had concerns about the Clinton team’s ability to manage money.

Patti Solis Doyle, Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign manager until she was fired on Feb. 10, also ran her Senate re-election bid in 2006. That campaign spent about $30 million even though Mrs. Clinton faced only token Democratic and Republican opposition.

“The Senate race spending in 2006 was an omen for a lot of us inside the campaign, but Hillary assured us that her presidential bid would be the best run in history,” said one major Clinton fund-raiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations within the campaign.


Yet the Clinton campaign at times found itself spending money on items that were not ultimately helpful. As part of their get-out-the-vote effort in Iowa, the campaign came up with a plan to have a local supermarket deliver sandwich platters to pre-caucus parties. It spent more than $95,384 on Jan. 1 at Hy-Vee Inc., a local grocery chain in West Des Moines, Iowa, in addition to buying loads of snow shovels to clear the walks for caucusgoers. Mrs. Clinton came in third in the Jan. 3 caucus. It did not snow.

Mr. Obama’s fund-raising surged after his Iowa victory. In January, he brought in more than $2.50 for every $1 she was given, and from Jan. 5 to Feb. 5, Mr. Obama spent nearly $16 million on political advertisements — more than $4 million more than Mrs. Clinton, according to a survey by the Campaign Media Analysis Group at TNS Media Intelligence. Mr. Obama broadcast 3,000 more advertisements than she did, and he was able to air those ads not only in the states that were immediately up for grabs but also in contests on Feb. 5 and beyond.

For instance, Mr. Obama spent nearly $480,000 on 1,331 spots in Missouri; he won the state’s primary, a closely fought contest and a national political bellwether, by one percentage point.

‘Losers are dumb and wasteful’
Mr. Obama’s campaign is not without highly paid consultants. His top media strategist is David Axelrod, whose firm received $175,000 in January and has collected $1.2 million over all. Mr. Obama’s polling is spread between four firms that have received $2.8 million collectively.

“Obviously, some campaigns are more careful and wise with their money than others,” Jim Jordan, a Democratic consultant who ran John Kerry’s presidential campaign until November 2003. “But these budgetary post-mortems tend to follow a familiar pattern; winners are by definition smart, and losers are dumb and wasteful. In truth, campaign budgeting is hard and complicated and three-dimensional and just impossible to understand without the full time-and-place context of the whole race.”

This article was reported by Michael Luo, Jo Becker and Patrick Healy and was written by Mr. Healy.


Copyright © 2008 The New York Times
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23286123/


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[Ghost]

I'll ignore the part about twisting it to suit my argument and just quote the man himself: (from the Reuter's article I mentioned)



From the Washington Post:



I don't believe that qualifies as twisting anything, Ghost. What it does qualify as, however, is foreign policy insanity when combined with a complete withdrawal of forces from Iraq.

The man is either incapable of understanding the situation, or incapable of keeping his mouth shut on strategic matters. Neither of those ideas is particularly reassuring in a President.

Your insinuation that attacking targets inside Pakistan without Pakistani approval would be construed as anything but an attack on Pakistan itself is equally insane. We are not attacking Iraq, for example, but the terrorists and insurgents who operate there. Does that in any way positively impact Iraqi opinion as to what we're doing? Does that fact make a damned bit of difference in how they see or react to the war?

Hes talking about attacking terrorists in pakistan, not attacking pakistan.

There is a massive difference.
The problem for pakistan is that they wont get approval of the public to allow US troops into the country. Therefore the US would have to do this without approval.
Mate this has been on the news for weeks.
This almost happened in different way a few weeks ago anyway with the nukes. remember that?

There is a clear difference between attacking pakistan itself and engaging their military, which isnt what they are talking about, and attacking terrorists within pakistan without pakistans approval.

[Ghost]

The pakistan situation is different though, if it happened in the UK we would just sort it out ourselves, Pakistan cant allow US troops onto its soil easily.

It would cause chaos due to widespread disapproval.
From what i understood from the news it would be a case of Pakistan not being in a position where it could authorize american troops to attack terrorists within Pakistan but it also would do nothing to stop it.
The idea was that if any leader in Pakistan allowed such an action they would be toppled pretty quickly destabilizing the country and then we have that worry with their nukes again, so the idea is to do it without official approval.
Though the Pakistani military would do nothing to stop it.
So essentially it would be allowed unofficially but not officially.

[bigboywasim]

A lot of Americans are fed up. We are wasting our money on other countries while our poor population is rising, we have a crappy health care system, and our education system needs more money pumped into it. Our boarder is not secure. Our military is stretched thin.

I think for now most America is tiered of Republicans. A lot of Republicans do not even like their candidates. Bush has basically killed the party for now.

Anyone taking over will have a lot of work to do. A lot of mess to clean up.

Clinton has been going downhill. States with 95% White population are voting for Obama. I wish he had more experience but I like him better than Hilary. There is no way I voting red. We need a fresh face, not a Bush/Clinton dynasty.

I am Pakistani and I do not agree with what Obama said before about Pakistan. Going in Pakistan is worse than Afghanistan. The population on the boarder is well armed. I think it wiill just cause more problems. Trying to secure the Pakistani/Afghan boarder will be a better option.

I agree with pull troops out of Iraq. Staying their for 100 years? Some people are simply insane.

The 40 million people in our country without Healthcare need it. I am all for the government providing healthcare for them. I believe it is everyone's right.

I do not fully support universal healthcare but I do think the government needs to support heathcare more. Kind of like how we have public and private schools.

I think the federal government needs to supports schools more. There is only so much the sates can do. I believe teachers need to get pain more especially k-12 teachers. College and universities also need more money and people who want to get a higher education should be able to get it even if they cannot afford it. At the end it will help the government when they make more money and pay more taxes.

Something needs to get done with the boarder.

If we stopped wasting money on wars and billions in aid to Israel, Egypt and the like maybe we can get some things done.

[jubaji]

.......................................

[Ghost]

What you have to see though is that there is an area in the north of pakistan that the pakistani army are trying to control and cant control. The are terrorist forces there that control entire areas and they want to overthrow the Pakistani government. They have enough combat experience to stop the Pakistani troops.

The US has already considered attacking this area as this is the heaviest concentration of terrorist forces anywhere i believe.

The problem for Pakistan, who would probably be more than willing to allow the americans to help, is that the public wont go for it simply because it means american troops/planes on their soil which outweighs the fact that the americans will win.

So in my opinion what would happen is that the americans will ask Pakistan to sort it out, Pakistan will say it cant, the US will go in without consent, but Pakistan wont do anything about it because they dont want to and the US presence would actually help them regain lost territory/remove the threat from these terrorist groups.

What will happen is that Pakistan will go to the UN and moan be publicly very critical in order to keeps its own public happy that they are doing something and seen to be against the US troops being on their soil.

The reality is that an american assault on the affected area would be very useful to the Pakistani leadership.
Remember we arent talking about some general assault on Pakistan here. The problem is in very specific areas which are under Taleban rule now.Pakistani forces cannot enter these regions. So its not like the Americans will be attacking Pakistan in the traditional sense of an attack.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6409089.stm

here is a map and you can see the brown area which is part of pakistan officially but is out of their control now. Specifically the are around TANK, thats a city lol not an actual single tank just sat there.

[FitnessRubber]

sigh... all this and the election isn't even until november...

[Hardball]

sigh... all this and the election isn't even until november...

I once failed poly sci, but even I know you have to pick the candidates in the primary before the general election in november.

[jubaji]

I once failed poly sci, but even I know you have to pick the candidates in the primary before the general election in november.

Did your course cover the importance of choosing candidates based on the racial preferences of foreigners?

[Hardball]

So Hardball/Fitness:
Is there any doubt that McCain is going to be the guy we're going to be looking at on the November ticket?

And is there really any doubt that Obama is going to beat Hillary?

Just curious. It seems like what we're talking about are the qualifications of the people involved, which is entirely relevant.

Hilliary still has a good chance because of Texas and Ohio. Texas has an enromous amount of delegates. Obama hasn't been doing that well with the Latino vote and Texas has a very large latino population.

McCain is in, no doubt but they are starting the mud slingging already.

[Ghost]

But we haven't been talking about military realities. We've been talking about political realities. Don't get me wrong - I'm all for blowing those bastards up wherever we can find them. But what Obama was talking about wasn't some "wink, wink, nudge nudge" operation. He put himself in a position that could be in opposition to Musharaf, and he did it publicly to win votes. Factors:

• Musharaf is not well liked, and his government is seen as corrupt. He took power in a coup and suspended the constitution of Pakistan, and he's known to be pretty brutal when his people get all uppity and start demanding things like basic rights.
• Pakistan is a nation with (literally) 20 different political parties, all vying for their share. With that many players and that kind of majority impossibility, divisiveness among them is worse than here in the US, which is saying something. Everyone is looking for a unifying issue that will win everyone else over.
• The Pakistani population is not only largely Muslim, but they are pretty anti-US. We're blamed for much of the B.S. that's going on there, we're disliked because of our support of India, and we're seen as the major force propping up a not-very-well-liked military dictator who's made the military more powerful than the clergy.
• Musharaf has admitted that he allowed the U.S. to threaten him into capitulation, which makes him a puppet in the eyes of most Pakistani Muslims. They see their leader as a man who bowed to the U.S. under threats of violence instead of as a strong Muslim who took a stand.
• Pakistani Muslims are nearly 80% Sunni. While most see al Qaeda for what it is, there's a reason al Qaeda operatives have been able to move and function inside Pakistan for so long without being caught, and it's NOT because the Pakistanis are eager and willing to turn them in.

Add those things together, and you have a government that's hanging on by pure military might and will, a populace that doesn't like it and sees the US as the reason for problems on both sides, and a US President that's willing to drop bombs even if the government says no?

The political reality is a double-edged sword. It would either make Musharaf look even more like an incompetent puppet, which takes away much of the value he currently has as an ally, or it would give him a reason to build some popularity with his people and condemn us, which takes away much of his value as an ally.

What Obama really should have done was keep his inexperienced mouth shut and wait until he has access to military commanders, intelligence professionals, and poicy advisors to help him make good decisions.

I personally dont like the idea of starting yet another war. Yet if its going to happen this is the way it will happen. Much the same as what Turkey is doing right now in Iraq.
They are attacking terrorist units in the north and not attacking iraq.
I hope that you can see my point using that as a perfect illustration of what Obama is talking about. It does not constitute an attack on the country as such. Yet the government will threaten and moan as if it were

[Ghost]

Did your course cover the importance of choosing candidates based on the racial preferences of foreigners?

Im sure if they studied Nelson Mandella they would has some idea of the significance of race when it comes to presidents.

I cant believe this even needs to be explained to be honest.
When the US comes to a point it can elect a black president it has reached a turning point, not only that but it sends a signal to the rest of the world.
I can go into more detail but you only have to read the news or watch the tv to understand it. Its really that simple.

[FitnessRubber]

The Presidency is not an office sought or won on race, nor gender. I can say honestly and with a clear conscience that I would vote for a person who was well qualified regardless of gender or ethnic background. I would have no problem - none, whatsoever - casting a vote for President Gonzales, President Li, President Rubenstein, President Mumba, or anyone else given the right credentials, right attitude, right experience, and right qualifications for the job. I think most of America probably feels that way, no matter what people want to believe. We'd rather have a qualified, solid president in office because he or she is qualified than an unqualified person who's white. Hell, I can see myself voting for Obama - in four or eight years. I just don't think he has the time or experience on the job to lead us out of the hole we're in. Give him some more time to build his experience and his understanding of what the country needs (as opposed to just what it wants), and I think he's got the tools.

very well put

[Garland]

Brewer 2012....?