Barack Obama Doesn’t Care About Being a Racist Hypocrite

To Avoid Conflicts, Clintons Liquidate Holdings – New York Times (6/15/07):

Mr. Clinton also has $15,001 to $50,000 in Easy Bill Ltd., an India-based company that works on electronic transactions and business services for Indians.

Shortly after the Clinton campaign released the financial information, the campaign of Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, circulated to news organizations — on what it demanded be a not-for-attribution-basis — a scathing analysis. It called Mrs. Clinton “Hillary Clinton (D-Punjab)” in its headline. The document referred to the investment in India and Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising efforts among Indian-Americans. The analysis also highlighted the acceptance by Mr. Clinton of $300,000 in speech fees from Cisco, a company the Obama campaign said has moved American jobs to India.

A copy of the document was obtained by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which provided it to The New York Times. The Clinton campaign has long been frustrated by the effort by Mr. Obama to present his campaign as above the kind of attack politics that Mr. Obama and his aides say has led to widespread disillusionment with politics by many Americans.

Gee, I could have sworn that Obama was passing himself off as a new kind of politician, above hackish and cynical attacks. Apparently a new kind of politician who throws racist stones from his own glass house.

Comments

  1. sac says:

    Doesn’t strike me as racist since the region mentioned (Punjab) is indeed partially in India, where the company that Clinton was investing in resides, and where many jobs are being outsourced to. It does strike me as politics as usual, which he did, as you say, vow to be above.

  2. Navin says:

    Obama had issues about Clinton, he should highlight the issues. Not go after a particular ethinic group.

    What if some Clinton staff did a memo on Obama (D-Sweto). How does that sound?

    Racist or not?

  3. matt says:

    i enjoy returning to the computer to find that the SacSwatter plugin is working properly. very low resource usage at that.

  4. sarabeth says:

    Some more of the same hypocritical attackery by the lofty-moral-tone Obama campaign.

    Still attacking Hillary, still doing it via Bill, still employing stealth “not-for-attribution” tactics. Only this time getting the facts wrong. So they end up looking not only hypocritical but stupid.

  5. sac says:

    What if some Clinton staff did a memo on Obama (D-Sweto). How does that sound?

    Do you mean “Soweto”? If that’s the case, then if Obama had investments in South Africa and was stumping for them, then I don’t think it would sound racist.

    I’m not endorsing what his campaign did, I just don’t think it’s racist. As SB pointed out, it was hypocritical and, apparently, not even fact-based.

  6. matt says:

    are you blissfully unaware of the anti-indian sentiment stemming from americans who feel their jobs were “stolen” from them by indians?

    do you really think that there isn’t a component that plays to this in the statement by obama’s camp?

  7. sarabeth says:

    What I find heartening is that both in the NYT D-Punjab story and in the 9/11 anniversary speech one I linked to in my previous comment, the press refused to allow the Obama campaign to launch these attacks anonymously.

    The high-moral-tone Obama campaign “demanded” that it be allowed to propagate these attacks anonymously. The press refused to honor the not-for-attribution demand. Twice.

    Maybe twice-bitten will now lead to thrice shy?

    How ironic if the much maligned media causes the Obama campaign to cease and desist from anonymous hit-and-runs.

  8. matt says:

    How ironic if the much maligned media causes the Obama campaign to cease and desist from anonymous hit-and-runs.

    they’ll just have to be more careful.

  9. John says:

    How the hell is that a racist comment?

    Punjab is a region in India and the memo was implying that Hillary Clinton was acting more like a Senator from Punjab, than the Senator of NY.

    This kind of stuff is common in politics. I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama had no idea this was going on and it was a decision of someone in one of his campaign’s departments.

    No big deal. The media is selling this (like the Rezko story) to hurt Obama. But both stories have no real substance or show any wrong-doings on Obama’s behalf.

  10. matt says:

    took a little while, but a true believer is in the house.

    How the hell is that a racist comment?

    if you had taken the time to read the above comments, you wouldn’t have had to ask that question. here’s a link lest you injure your scrolling finger.

    This kind of stuff is common in politics.

    yes, it is. again, your reading comprehension needs some work. From the original post: “Gee, I could have sworn that Obama was passing himself off as a new kind of politician, above hackish and cynical attacks.”

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Obama had no idea this was going on and it was a decision of someone in one of his campaign’s departments.

    the Cossacks work for the czar. past that, i’d be surprised if anyone who knows who obama is is unaware of his supposed “high road” campaign. do you think his staff is unaware? please. if this was a staff level error, striking at the very heart of what obama’s campaign is supposedly about, those staffers would have been fired, and obama would have disavowed the content of the statement. he hasn’t.

    The media is selling this (like the Rezko story) to hurt Obama.

    the same media who created obama in the first place just 6 months ago? or don’t you remember all the hagiographic free press he got?

    But both stories have no real substance or show any wrong-doings on Obama’s behalf.

    wrong-doings? is that the standard we’re talking about? not the obama “i’m above it all” standard stump speech?

    shouldn’t someone posting from a harvard IP be smarter than this?

  11. sarabeth says:

    The Obama has made some appropriate noises about the D-Punjab memo.

    But I’ve seen nothing about the Bill Clinton 9/11 speech allegation. And that was the one that was factually incorrect.

  12. matt says:

    But I’ve seen nothing about the Bill Clinton 9/11 speech allegation.

    only fake apologize once a big enough constituency is offended. duh.

  13. sarabeth says:

    them indian-americans have clout, huh?

  14. sarabeth says:

    how funny would it be if the Obama campaign had outsourced some stuff to India?

  15. matt says:

    how funny would it be if the Obama campaign had outsourced some stuff to India?

    this would be funny, but more importantly, obama isn’t anything close to a populist firebrand who denounces outsourcing. he’s actually not anti-outsourcing at all, not surprising considering his centrism and wall street support.

    since he’s saying that it wasn’t intended as a racial slur, the only meaning left is bashing clinton as pro-outsourcing. maybe someone can get him on the record on his own position…

  16. sarabeth says:

    true, but if someone turned up evidence of outsourcing to India tomorrow, what fig leaf would he hide behind then?

  17. matt says:

    what fig leaf would he hide behind then?

    i’m going to go ahead and guess lofty rhetoric would be involved.

  18. Time says:

    Obama is dirty period!!!

    After all this, if Obama says that he is not aware of this memo and the action plan, he things the public is dumb or foolish. which candidate will not know what his/her campaign is doing?
    Secondly, it is not just Cisco that has outsourced jobs, literally every business in the manufacturing sector has outsourced to China and sind India has knowledge/intellectual capital and its much cost effective IT jobs have been outsourced and finally the customer is benefitting from this. So, to just pin point on Indians or on Cisco is kinda crazy and very superficial flyer without any decent reasearch on it.
    We caution you Mr Obama, please dont think you can fool around, Also we suggest you do your research firsh before splashing it all around. This has been quite disgusting….eeks…

  19. sarabeth says:

    cool. time is on our side.

  20. sac says:

    Ha. Good one.