On Obama & Cleland. And Georgia voting machine fraud
Political Wire is pointing to Robert Novak today:
GOP strategists “are privately conceding that the GOP could lose Georgia’s 15 presidential electors for the first time since 1992 because of Bob Barr’s ballot position as the Libertarian Party presidential candidate.”
“Third-party presidential candidates almost always run more poorly in the actual election than their showing in the polls, but Barr, as a former Republican congressman from Georgia, might sustain support in his home state.”
Count me among those who believe it’s true.
Meanwhile, Max Cleland was disinvited from an Obama fundraiser in Atlanta last week because the wounded war hero is now a lobbyist. So what is Cleland a lobbyist for?
Cleland, a triple amputee and decorated Vietnam War veteran, was a U.S. senator for six years, until 2003, and he remains active in Democratic politics. Last July, Cleland became a lobbyist for Tissue Regeneration Technologies, a Cherokee County company that develops and makes medical devices for military personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
No matter. A spokeswoman for the Obama campaign is quoted as saying, “But we have a policy.”
Apparently “change we can believe in” does NOT include making provisions for EXCEPTIONS in policy where needed.
Says Stefan at Georgia’s left-leaning Blogs for Democracy:
Demonizing lobbyists is dumb and anti-information. Were lobbyists given too much sway in the Bush administration? Yeah, but they were only on loan from their corporate chiefs. So in this scenario, the CEO of a company can come and rub shoulders with Obama, but not Cleland. Brilliant policy.
Get ready for government for those who aren’t paying attention.
Speaking of paying attention, on Thursday RawStory reported on a little noticed press conference in Ohio where a GOP cyber-security expert (and former adviser to Sen. John McCain) suggested that Diebold tampered with the 2002 Georgia election.
Specifically, the election resulted in incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland’s defeat. A week before the vote he had a five point lead and incumbent Democratic Governor Roy Barnes, who was also defeated, had an eleven point lead.
A whistleblower provided a questionable Diebold patch to Stephen Spoonamore, a prominent cyber-security expert and registered Republican:
Individuals close to [Attorney Cliff] Arnebeck’s office said Spoonamore confirmed that the patch included nothing to repair a clock problem. Instead, he identified two parallel programs, both having the full software code and even the same audio instructions for the deaf. Spoonamore said he could not understand the need for a second copy of the exact same program — and without access to the machine for which the patch was designed, he could not learn more. Instead, he said he took the evidence to the Cyber-Security Division of the Department of Justice and reported the series of events to authorities. The Justice Department has not yet acted on his report.
I’ll be among those paying attention!
opinions powered by SendLove.to
9 Responses to “On Obama & Cleland. And Georgia voting machine fraud”
Apparently “change we can believe in” does NOT include making provisions for EXCEPTIONS in policy where needed.
My immediate reaction was to agree that exceptions are necessary when needed,
My seciond thought was: How do you separate the good lobbyists from bad lobbyists and who defines “good”?
The idea of exceptions is much easier to accept than the process by which exceptions are made.
Another candidate might think that a lobbyist for health insurance companies or labor unions might be an asset because of the expertise in the field they could provide. What then?
Obama could have an exceptions policy or he could explain why he made an exception in this case.
A “triple amputee and decorated Vietnam War veteran” who lobbies on behalf of a “company that develops and makes medical devices for military personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan” sounds like a reasonable exception to me. Certainly as reasonable as some of the other changes Obama's been criticized for making recently.
I'd also like to further underscore Stefan at Blog for Democracy's point that Obama kept the decorated veteran amputee lobbyist out, while all the corporate honchos with the money were welcomed in. I note that the earlier reports referred to the fund-raiser merely as an “event”. It was a fund-raiser.
Cleland was classy in his quote:
“They're trying to be the new broom that sweeps cleaner in Washington, which we need,” Cleland told the New York Times. “I don't feel dissed, put upon or disinvited.”
Our next president was all appearances. That's politics as usual if you ask me.
My thought is pretty much the same as runasim's: how do you separate the good and bad lobbyists? I'm sure to Bush all his lobbyists are good.
With respect to the comment about Obama rubbing shoulders with the CEO, and not the lobbyists…. well, the CEO will not be spending his days hounding Obama for his support, whereas the lobbyists will.
I hope that Obama does believe that medical devices for wounded military personnel are important because it's part of government's responsibility to take of its wounded soldiers. I don't think Obama should support this particular company over others in the same field (which may even have better products) just because the CEO attended a fundraiser or that lobbyists lobbied him.
Obama is right to avoid the lobbyists, and his campaign was “inartful” in its response. The campaign could have said that Obama has said all along that he supports the troops wounded in war and that he believes the US government should give them the best care. That if Obama meets with a lobbyist for a particular company people may think that Obama will funnel business to supporters and not the best qualified company to take care of our war wounded.
The CEO attending a fundraiser with Obama can only make a small impression- think of how many fundraisers Obama has had and all the people who want to meet him. I can barely remember all the meetings I went to in the last month at work….
“Our next president was all appearances. That's politics as usual if you ask me.”
Increasingly, it's becoming apparent, that 'appearances' are more dependent on the self-created expectations of beholders and less on anything Obama does or says.
What could 'change' possibly, realistically mean?
>that, while working in the arena of politics, anyone could, simultaneously, bannish the mechanics of politics, no matter the size of the broom with which one is sweeping? We're talking about politics, but some people are surprised to find politicians running for office.
Amazing.
>that publically identifying aspirations, for himself and the nation, is equivalent to a promise to single handedly produce a miraculous achievement of each and every one of those aspiratons within a few years or even a lifetime?
Dreamers are waking from their dreams and are angry that dreams don't continue in the awake hours of life.
Amazing.
For those not expecting miracles or miracle workers, Obama is doing just fine.
For starters, within the confines of politics, he has reframed HOW to look at politics, i.e. dynamically, not stuck-in-a-rut ideologically.
Others will have to look elsewhere to find deam fulfillment.
.
As an Obama supporter I completely disagree with that decision, however if he is trying to avoid the lobbyist trap that McCain has succumbed to, then perhaps the only way is to exclude everyone, I don't know. It's a tricky game this election. Everyone's going to microscopically analyse every hiccup, burp and exhale of the candidates.
“It's a tricky game this election.”
Every election, and all of politics is a tricky game.
It's trickier now than ever before because the level of intrusive scrutiny of 'hiccups' has increased exponentially while news coverage of what's really important has nearly disappeared.
We heard next to nothing about Afghanistan before Obama's trip, but we know all about lapel pins..
And if he let Cleland stay, he'd be skewered as a flip-flopper. I'm glad he's taking a stand on lobbying, even against the potentially “good” ones.
Obama is being consistent here, even if it forces him to make a tough decision that is savaged by those who don't understand what consistency requires. It's particularly newsworthy because of how many lobbyists are working with McCain.
True, when your latest gaffe ends up on the internet 5 minutes later, you need to allow for the digital drop-kick now and then.