Here's a quick response to the rather unattractive flyer I just received in the mail from the Democratic Party in NC, just in time for this evening's debate. Of course there's more to be found, but here's a few quick rabbits to chase:

-----regarding the "Exxon Mobil" image:

from Obama Unplugged
Lost without a Teleprompter.
by Dean Barnett
02/12/2008

"This is the kind of empty class warfare shtick that earned John Edwards an early exit from the race. What's more, it displayed the kind of simplistic sloganeering that Obama had previously eschewed.

"Obama's shot at Exxon Mobil's profits is strikingly disingenuous. He seems to be implicitly saying that the healthy earnings are good news for Mr. Exxon and Mr. Mobil, who will promptly stash most of the profits underneath their obviously outsized mattresses. The two will then likely invest the remainder in foreign sweatshops that will facilitate the outsourcing of even more American jobs.

"Of course, who benefits from corporate earnings is a slightly complex matter, and thus vulnerable to simplistic demagoguery. Just ask John Edwards. But Barack Obama is far too intelligent to not realize that many of the school teachers and union workers and working moms that so often people his more elegant speeches likely have an interest in Exxon Mobil's profits either from their retirement plan's portfolio or their union's holdings or their own investments that they actively manage. The implied notion that corporate profits matter only to the corporations in question is risibly counterfactual."

from Newsweek Obama's Oil Spill
Obama says he doesn't take money from oil companies. Factcheck.org says that's a little too slick.
By Viveca Novak | factcheck.org
Mar 31, 2008

Obama: "I don't take money from oil companies or Washington lobbyists, and I won't let them block change anymore."

"It's true that Obama doesn't take money directly from oil companies, but then, no presidential, House or Senate candidate does. They can't: Corporations have been prohibited from contributing directly to federal candidates since the Tillman Act became law in 1907.

"Obama has, however, accepted more than $213,000 in contributions from individuals who work for, or whose spouses work for, companies in the oil and gas industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That's not as much as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who has received more than $306,000 in donations from people tied to the industry, but it's still a substantial amount.

"We'd say the Obama campaign is trying to create a distinction without very much of a practical difference. Political action committee funds are pooled contributions from a company's or an organization's individual employees or members; corporate lobbyists often have a big say as to where a PAC's donations go. But a PAC can give no more than $5,000 per candidate, per election. We're not sure how a $5,000 contribution from, say, Chevron's PAC would have more influence on a candidate than, for example, the $9,500 Obama has received from Chevron employees giving money individually.

"In addition, two oil industry executives are bundling money for Obama – drumming up contributions from individuals and turning them over to the campaign. George Kaiser, the chairman of Oklahoma-based Kaiser-Francis Oil Co., ranks 68th on the Forbes list of world billionaires. He's listed on Obama's Web site as raising between $50,000 and $100,000 for the candidate. Robert Cavnar is president and CEO of Milagro Exploration LLC, an oil exploration and production company. He's named as a bundler in the same category as Kaiser.

"We're not making any judgments about whether Obama is influenced by campaign contributions. In fact, we'd note that he singles out ExxonMobil in this ad, even though he's received more than $30,850 from individuals who work for the company. But we do think that in theory, contributions that come in volume from oil industry executives, or are bundled by them, can be every bit as influential as PAC contributions, if not more so.

"Lobbyist Loopholes?
We've noted before that Obama's policy of not taking money from lobbyists is a bit of hair-splitting. It's true that he doesn't accept contributions from individuals who are registered to lobby the federal government. But he does take money from their spouses and from other individuals at firms where lobbyists work. And some of his bigger fundraisers were registered lobbyists until they signed on with the Obama campaign.

"Even the campaign has acknowledged that this policy is flawed. "It isn't a perfect solution to the problem and it isn't even a perfect symbol," Obama spokesman Bill Burton has said."----
***********************************

Moving on: ever notice how Obama pushes for independence from oil from the "Middle East," while McCain pushes for independence from "foreign" oil?

The Obama mailer mentioned Russia...so, meet one of Obama's most prominent supporters, Senator Charles Schumer of New York:

Obama's Schumer Problem
Editorial of The New York Sun | June 4, 2008

Europeans starting to focus on the post-primary debate in America — and on what an Obama administration might mean — will want to pay particular attention to the op-ed dispatch in the Wall Street Journal yesterday from Senator Schumer. The Democrat of New York proposes that America deal with the Iranian nuclear crisis by turning Eastern Europe back over to Russia. If that sounds like an exaggeration, we commend a reading of the article in full at WSJ.com.

Sure enough, the senator claims that Prime Minister Putin "is an old-fashioned nationalist who seeks to regain the power and greatness Russia had before the fall of the Soviet Union." What greatness was that exactly, senator? The part where the political prisoners were sent to the Gulag? Or where the East Germans trying to escape over the Berlin Wall to freedom were shot and killed? Or where the Jews weren't allowed either to worship or leave?

Mr. Schumer proposes to please Mr. Putin by abandoning NATO's plans to provide Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania with a missile defense. That defense, quoth Mr. Schumer, "mocks Mr. Putin's dream of eventually restoring Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe." What is Mr. Schumer saying here — that he sides with Mr. Putin's plan to gain hegemony over Eastern Europe? What message would it send to our NATO allies in Warsaw, Prague, and Bucharest to bow to Mr. Putin's dream of putting Europe back under the Russian boot?

Mr. Schumer claims that the missile defense sites are "to thwart the threat of a nuclear missile attack by Iran," a threat that Mr. Schumer describes as "hypothetical and remote." Well, if the governments in Poland, and Czech Republic, and Romania thought the threat was so remote, they would not have invited the missile defense sites to be there.

Our enemies have already launched large-scale attacks against European targets — 191 killed in the Madrid train bombing of 2004, 52 dead in the London bus and subway bombing of 2005, eight killed on Monday at the bombing of the Danish embassy at Islamabad. To the relatives and friends of those victims the threat seems neither hypothetical nor remote. Nor to the Israelis who were attacked by Iraqi scud missiles in the Gulf War or by Hezbollah terrorists with Zelzal and Fajr missiles during the 2006 Lebanon War.

If there's any consolation to our allies in Eastern Europe, it is that Mr. Schumer doesn't think it is only they who should go unprotected from enemy missiles. He wants America to go without missile defense, too. Back in 2000, he sent a letter begging President Clinton to "resist pressure to deploy a national missile defense system at this time." In 2004, he repeatedly tried to hold back half a billion dollars in spending on missile defense. The idea of defending against enemy missiles just gives the Democrat the fantods.

The Wall Street Journal led the fight to deploy a missile defense. So one has to figure its hope, in airing Mr. Schumer's views, is to alert the our allies in such liberated nations as once stood behind an iron curtain that the third-ranking member of the Democratic leadership in the Senate is, in order to gain cooperation from the mullahs in Iran, prepared to feed Mr. Putin's fantasies of taking back Eastern Europe. It's a circumstance in which Mr. McCain may start to look more and more attractive, at home and abroad.

Here's a few sites; read in large context, a lot of things make sense, like Obama's sudden "vacation" to Hawaii (the last link concerns the other Georgia, the one further away)

http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/01/31/cq_2213.html

http://www.russiablog.org/2006/09/post_1.php

http://www.senate.gov/~schumer/SchumerWebsite/pressroom/press_releases/P...

http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3159&...