One of things many people like about Obama is his ability to form a consensus with people from the other side of the aisle to pass actual important legislation. Which is why this article was nice.

“There are some very capable Republicans who I have a great deal of respect for,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press. “The opportunities are there to create a more effective relationship between parties.”

Among the Republicans he would seek help from are Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana, John Warner of Virginia and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Obama said.

Never a group to pass up the opportunity to eat their own, this threw several people on the left in to hissy fits. Why? Because Tom Coburn is an asshole. This is an indisputable fact. However, he’s also one of the sole and only voices for restraint on the Republican side of the Senate. And he pisses off his Republican colleagues on a regular basis. Which means he is not a party-line toeing ideologue.

Don’t believe me?

In April, for example, he tackled nineteen highly questionable expenses that his colleagues had slipped into the budget at the last minute– money that no branch of government had requested, which would directly benefit Senate campaign supporters. In September, he teamed up with Barack Obama to expose federal waste by putting the national budget on a public Web site– a prospect so alarming to some senators that two of them tried to kill it anonymously. And in December, as his Republican colleagues began cleaning out their offices to make room for the new Democratic leadership, Coburn fired a parting shot: Using legislative procedures, he blocked the GOP from finishing its annual business and pushed many of the most important budgetary decisions for incoming Democrats to make in the New Year.

The entire GQ article is a fascinating read, and well worth it. And here is the bill he and Obama drafted and managed to eventually pass unanimously. It’s one of the best bills to come out of the Senate in the last few years, and it’s important.

Zbigniew Brzezinski today endorsed Barack Obama:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foreign-policy experts in the Democratic Party, threw his support behind Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, saying the Illinois senator has a better global grasp than his chief rival, Hillary Clinton.

Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world,” Brzezinski said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.”

“Obama is clearly more effective and has the upper hand,” Brzezinski, who was President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, said. “He has a sense of what is historically relevant, and what is needed from the United States in relationship to the world.”

Brzezinski, 79, dismissed the notion that Clinton, 59, a New York senator and the wife of former President Bill Clinton, is more seasoned than Obama, 46. “Being a former first lady doesn’t prepare you to be president. President Truman didn’t have much experience before he came to office. Neither did John Kennedy,” Brzezinski said.

Clinton’s foreign-policy approach is “very conventional,” Brzezinski said. “I don’t think the country needs to go back to what we had eight years ago.”

“There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs,” he added. “And Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America’s relationship with the world.”

Brzezinski also sided with Obama, who was criticized by Clinton as being “irresponsible” and “naive” for saying he would meet in his first year as president with leaders of adversaries such as Iran and Syria. “What’s the hang-up about negotiating with the Syrians or with the Iranians?” Brzezinksi said. “What it in effect means” is “that you only talk to people who agree with you.”

Oh snap! Michelle Obama laid the smack down on Hillary today, saying:

“If you can’t run your own house, you can’t run the White House.”

Papers and blogs rushed to print the verbal slieght. Excpet it wasn’t that at all, and has been a part of her normal stump speech for a while. The full quote, in context:

That one of the most important things that we need to know about the next President of the United States is, is he somebody that shares our values? Is he somebody that respects family? Is a good and decent person? So our view was that, if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House. So, so we’ve adjusted our schedules to make sure that our girls are first, so while he’s traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning, I get the girls ready, I get them off, I go and do trips, I’m home before bedtime. So the girls know that I was gone somewhere, but they don’t care. They just know that I was at home to tuck them in at night, and it keeps them grounded, and, and children, the children in our country have to know that they come first. And our girls do and that’s why we’re doing this. We’re in this race for not just our children, but all of our children.

The media needs to stop manufacturing fights. The candidates can do that all on their own.

Oh Hell, Goon Oracle is so awesome here, I’m just going to repost what she said.

[This] may help some supporters when asked the question ‘how do we know he can truly reach across the aisle and bring the two parties together/work with Republicans?’

Two in-depth stories, one from the Washington Post and one from the New York Times, should be required reading for those who need a quick introduction to what the man accomplished across the aisle in Illinois. The New York Times also has a very comprehensive Obama page that is nice to bookmark, from which the graphic below came, and which also has links to the aforementioned articles in both the Times and the Post. It is updated periodically.

Here’s a handy little graphic from the New York Times on his legislative career in Illinois.

(editors note: Click for large, readable version)

Some highlights from his US Senate bipartisan record:

Partnering with Orrin Hatch to develop legislation to promote plug-in vehicles

Obama leads bipartisan effort to improve fuel economy

Senate Passes Obama, McCaskill Legislation to Provide Safety Net for Families of Wounded Service Members with 34 bipartisan cosponsors

He introduced legislation last year with Tom freaking Coburn (R - OK) to make it easier to find the identities of recipients of federal funding and financial assistance. It was signed into law.

Teamed with U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., to sponsor a bill last year expanding efforts to locate and destroy weapons of mass destruction. It was signed into law Jan 2007.

Try typing ‘bipartisan legislation sponsored Obama Senate’ into Google for even more hits.

Goons: Doing the leg work so you don’t have to.

Holy crap, the Associated Press is doing the fact checking for me!

WASHINGTON - Democrat Barack Obama said it, the Republican Party pointed out in a screaming headline Tuesday that highlighted the presidential candidate’s comments on Afghanistan and the killing of civilians.
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Behind the scenes, Obama’s rival campaigns buzzed about his statement uttered Monday during a campaign stop in New Hampshire when he was asked about his plan to move troops into Afghanistan.

“We’ve got to get the job done there and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there,” Obama said.

THE SPIN:

The suggestion whispered by Obama’s opponents was that he was maligning the efforts of troops fighting in Afghanistan by stating they are “just” out there killing civilians.

The Republican National Committee simply repeated the comment as one of their “They Said It!” series used to highlight statements by opponents that supposedly put them in a bad light. RNC Chairman Mike Duncan followed up later in a statement demanding that Obama apologize for his “offensive” statement.

“It is hard to imagine that anyone who aspires to be commander in chief would say such a thing about our brave men and women in uniform,” Duncan said. “Obama owes our armed forces an apology — today.”

THE FACT CHECK:

A check of the facts shows that Western forces have been killing civilians at a faster rate than the insurgents have been killing civilians.

The U.S. and NATO say they don’t have civilian casualty figures, but The Associated Press has been keeping count based on figures from Afghan and international officials. Tracking civilian deaths is a difficult task because they often occur in remote and dangerous areas that are difficult to reach and verify.

As of Aug. 1, the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can’t be attributed to one party.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai expressed his concern about the civilian deaths during a meeting last week with President Bush.

Bush said he understands the agony that Afghans feel over the loss of innocent lives and that he is doing everything he can to protect them. He said the Taliban are using civilians as human shields and have no regard for their lives.

“The president rightly expressed his concerns about civilian casualty,” Bush said of Karzai. “And I assured him that we share those concerns.”

Some more refutations of the “Obama lacks experience” meme that despite all contradictory evidence refuses to die.

Goon miss_chaos brings us this:

Obama has spent more time in elected public office than either Edwards or Hillary, and has made more productive use of his short time in the Senate than most career politicians.

editors note: Obama sponsored 152 bills and resolutions brought before the 109th Congress in 2005 and 2006, and cosponsored another 427.

Goon drscience says:

I’ve been wondering why the hell Obama gets pinned as the ‘inexperienced’ candidate compared to other politicians.

Republicans:
Rudy “my city was attacked by terrorists and I screwed up the response” Giuliani?
Mitt “former governor of Mass and admittedly competent CEO” Romney?
Fred “former senator and TV actor” Thompson?
How about the guy who used to be a baptist minister?

Democrats:
Clinton “I spent a lot of time physically inside the white house” Clinton? Why aren’t the Republicans nominating Laura Bush?
John “I ran for VP last term and lost” Edwards?

Now, Biden and Richardson have experience but the men both own 50% shares in a fucking gaffe factory.

I don’t exactly get why the community organizer/constitutional law professor/state senator/U.S. senator is painted as such a helpless child.

but whatever. If vast experience is what it took for Cheney and Rumsfeld to engineer the Iraq War, and Clinton and Edwards to vote for it, than whatever the barometer for experience is I’m relieved Obama doesn’t have any.

Goon Fix mentions:

My encounters on this question usually go along these lines:

“He seems inexperienced in Congress.”

“Do you trust congress?”

“Not really. They’re corrupt.”

“He’s inexperienced at that.”

Why people don’t view inexperience and a wish to change a system you already don’t like and don’t trust as a good thing is beyond me.

All of these are valid and awesome and ought to be spread around.

As regards this previous post, wherein Hillary Clinton chastizes Barack Obama for “taking nukes off the table,” The Associated Press points out that she said the same thing last year as regards Iran.

“I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table,” she said in April 2006.

Her views expressed while she was gearing up for a presidential run stand in conflict with her comments this month regarding Obama, who faced heavy criticism from leaders of both parties, including Clinton, after saying it would be “a profound mistake” to deploy nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

As regards this previous entry about Obama and Pakistan, I present you with a little snippet from tonights AFL-CIO debate. Full transcript here.

Senator Biden: But folks, I got to say something here. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. The truth of the matter is, none of what you heard earlier is correct. It’s already the policy of the United States, has been for four years, that if there was actionable intelligence, we would go into — into Pakistan. That’s the law.

Secondly, it’s already the law, that I wrote into the law, saying that in fact we don’t cooperation from Musharraf, we cut off his money.

It’s time everybody start to know the facts — the facts.

So it’s already US policy and law to go in to Waziristan if we have to, and it’s already US policy and law to cut off Pakistan’s funding if they don’t work with us to stop bin Laden. The whole kerfuffle, then, does indeed break down to not telling the American people how one might inact foreign policy, were one to be elected.

Oh, except President Bush did just that last year:

President Bush said Wednesday he would order U.S. forces to go after Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan if he received good intelligence on the fugitive al Qaeda leader’s location.

“Absolutely,” Bush said.

The president made the comments Wednesday in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Although Pakistan has said it won’t allow U.S. troops to operate within its territory, “we would take the action necessary to bring him to justice.”

Apparently, the only person who can’t talk about this strategy is Hillary Clinton. And Chris Dodd, when he’s playing lap dog.

TPM reports on the escalating war of words between the Senators Clinton and Obama. Obama was asked by the Associated Press whether he’d consider using nukes against terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan.

“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama said, with a pause, “involving civilians.” Then he quickly added, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

Clinton responded:

“I think that presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons. Presidents, since the Cold War, have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don’t believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.”

So we should be “concerned” about talking about putting pressure on Pakistan to help root out bin Laden, but it’s totally copacetic to talk about nuking Pakistan or Afganistan?

A couple of Goons took it upon themselves to write to the BBC regarding the story they’d published yesterday. Goon Eglamore got a response:

Thank you for your email and the points you raise. Let me assure you that no bias was intended, even if the story gave you that impression. The story was written from initial takes on the news wires that spoke of Mr Obama’s readiness to send troops in to Pakistan - stories that were later amended to speak of military force. We should have gone back to this story and checked his actual words.

We have gone through the transcript of his speech and double-checked the quotes. The story has now been re-written to make it clear that Mr Obama was talking about using military force rather than a troop invasion.

We accept that the story should have been better written and checked, and we do appreciate your comments on this.

Kind regards
Americas desk
BBC News website

Maybe there’s hope, yet.