Good for Obama. We should welcome this debate. We will win it and the republicans will not. We should welcome any chance to make them remind the American people that they want to sink billions more dollars and thousands more lives into this pointless screw-up.

Side by side Barack Obama makes John McCain look even more like the village idiot than the village idiot he is trying to replace.

Touche, Barack! He is soooooooo intellectually superior. I am glad he is defending himself right away so BushCain will know what to expect if/when they try this stupidity again.

McCain Of The Panderosa.

More War Years! More War Years! More War Years!

A vote for The Maverick Of The Panderosa, is like a Vote for the Cowboy from Crawford that rounded him up and branded him.

More War Years! More War Years! More War Years!

Nice work. He crushed it.

And I disagree with Mike Drew. When you have a good response on a topic that you want to debate, I think it is a good idea to let the story percolate in the media a bit.

What i found interesting is that Sen Obama, for all of his rhetoric about looking forward, spends a lot of his time looking back at th mistakes of the Bush administration. I really did not hear any substantive conversation about the future, and his comment that he would not talk to terrorists does not mesh with the statements on his website.

"Ridicule and bemusement" is the only proper tone Obama should take with these clowns. They aren't worthy of outrage, and they aren't worthy of any "all due respect." This shouldn't be difficult for Obama, as he has almost 8 years of the McBush years to hold up and throw in the GOP's face.

I think early primary concerns that Obamba was going to be--what's was the phrase?--"all Kumbaya" on the trail are being soundly put to rest.

The guy's no Kerry. He had the difficult task of winning the nomination at a time when he was necessarily (necessary due to his message) hindered from responding fully to both Clintons. Not an easy task, but one he succeeded at.

No such restrictions prevent an even stronger approach to McCain.

I look forward to the general election in direct proportion to the amount I did not look forward to this primary season.

McCain and Bush are going to get called out on their bullshit.

Obama is proving he is no wallflower.

Throwing around words like 'appeasement' divorced from context, meaning, or reality is the old style politics that leads to what we have now - an administration that is in perpetual campaign mode. Not an effective governing strategy, and one that leads to the dumbing down (if possible) of radio hosts like Kevin James.

It's easy to ridicule the ridiculous. If only they weren't running foreign policy for our nation.

Also, I have no problems with Obama's timing on any of the responses. I trust in Obama's and Axelrod's instincts on this. They've proven incredibly adept so far.

Nothing wrong with his timing. What a relief, after watching Kerry self-immolate by taking the "I'm not going to dignify that with a response," route in '04. The Right Wing Noise Machine is going to learn: you fling shit at Obama, shit comes flying straight back at you!

Very refreshing. Too often the Democratic response has been to try to out-hawk the neo-cons. That's a losing game, not to mention bad foreign policy.

I look forward to Obama and McCain standing on a stage and having that debate on foreign policy!

If I didn't know better, I'd think George's little bombshell speech indicates that he's working for the Obama campaign. What a perfect set-up for Obama!

Obama WILL win this debate, because: (1) he's got strength, the facts and integrity on his side, (2) McCain is an opportunist who will take whatever position or use whatever argument du jour he thinks he needs to score political points, and (3) Bush is a coward, who used his daddy's connections to avoid military service in Viet Nam, lied about it and had the incriminating records destroyed.

I, too, think Obama got the timing right.

By letting the rest of the party (including Hillary!) step up and defend him, he really projected the sense that he's the guy now. Then he comes in, weaves together the most effective parts of the earlier statements, especially Biden's mockery and Kerry's factual rebuttal, and delivers his response.

To Mike Drew --

Perspective. We are obsessed. An hour is a year. I talked last night with two friends who are pro-Obama, and think they're really following the race. I happened to mention Howard Wolfson. They had no idea who he is.

I think Obama's timing on this response is good, because he will own Friday, maybe right through to Sunday morning.

Have a nice weekend everybody.

I agree on the timing stuff. It would be one thing if it had been allowed to hang out there without commentary but he was out literally withing 15 minutes with his own statement then he had his fellow dem leaders (including Clinton) out there slamming the comments making hay on this ever since. This builds the interest and I think letting this thing percolate for the past 24hours was actually a good thing.
He has been too late on somethings in the past but this one I think is spot on.

It's what is known as Barakarate. You don't punch at your opponent, you punch through your opponent.

Apparently CNN didn't get the word that it's 16 hours late.

Can you imagine a presidential candidate is having a discussion with a sitting president? This is remarkable. This guy is smart, Jon Stewart said it best. "I want a president that is way smarter than me". He's doing it with a man with a 28% approval.Put that together with a nearly flawless campaign & command of finance never before seen........... well, beginning to look like a winning strategy. We may find all the outrage at long, long last coming home to roost.

What's beautiful about this whole episode is that very clearly Congressional Leaders are committed to rapid response.

And then the Top Gun goes into Action!

♪♪♪

I loved the speech. I also loved the fact Dems rallied around Obama and with swiftness. Seems some lessons have been learned. ALso a tip of the hat tp HRC she played this eactly right and did Obama justice.

As much as I liked, admired and supported Gore in 2000, neither he nor (certainly) Kerry in 2004 came CLOSE to having the rapid-response capabilities that Bill Clinton pioneered and perfected in his two campaigns. In fact, both Gore and Kerry could be fairly criticized as being overly complacent and even naive about how to respond to GOP sliming attacks. But this dude Obama, he's a warrior, and his campaign is looking smarter and tougher by the day. No comparisons to Mike Dukakis here. Bravo.

Finally, a Democrat is calling a spade a spade. If the media wasn't going to cover McCain's comments yesterday, it will have to look at them now that Obama has addressed them head on. Good for him.
http://thinmansblog.blogspot.com/

It's all together a different ball game when you hear and see Obama speak rather than just reading the transcript. He really packs a punch.

Thanks for the upload.

Kick ass!

At times hit the right tone? I thought it was pretty much a home-run, and of course an indicator of more to come. I wish he'd drop the insider lingo--Bush's comments "for the domestic market," McCain's !00 years comment "didn't poll well"--these are grave matters, not stock market tips--but overall, I thought Obama's response was as smart, well-judged and forcefully delivered as any I've seen from a Democrat in a long time. Bodes well, IMO.

Elegant timing, I think. Yesterday he'd want the whole news cycle to belong to Edwards in order to make sure it sank in the thick heads of the undeclared supers. And it allowed time for not only Obama's supporters but even Hillary herself to condemn the whole "appeasement" thing. Today that story would be fading. Getting this out early-ish on a Friday lets it spin around and gain significance right on time for the Sunday morning talk show circuit.

So which shows is Obama appearing on this Sunday? You can bet party leaders will hit some, too. TPMTV's Sunday roundup should be worth watching (I can't stand actually watching those purported journalists).

That was excellent! Bravo Barack! It was just the right tone. He was strong but reasoned. He didn't come across as the victim. He repeatedly linked McCain to Bush. He may still have some work to do on the notion that he was willing to talk to terrorists. I believe it was in the MSNBC debate that he said he would meet with leaders like Ahmadinejad of Iran, which I think is the source for McCain's accusation that Obama will talk to terrorists. McCain will probably continue that line of attack, so Obama will likely need to deal with it more directly. But Obama gets very high marks for his comments today.

(forgive me for the plagiarism):

THIS IS EXCELLENT NEWS FOR MCCAIN!!!!!

Biden's my top choice for VP. I think he will be gret on the campaign trails, delivering his aptented one-liners like "A noun, a verb and 9/11."

More than anything else, I am gratified to see he made the point about exactly who it is that is responsible for Hamas being in power in the first place.

You regulars have heard me rant about how that all happened before and have probably long ago grown tired of it.

To translate into a language Bush and McCain can understand "Bring it on"

Hit them and hit them hard. Obama's right, they have A LOT to answer for.

While Neville Chamberlain was treating with Hitler in Munich in 1939 ("Appeasement"), Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker (our president's grandfathers) "...were the financial managers of a well-organized American effort to funnel the investments of right-wing U.S. bankers and industrialists into Germany which funded the rise to power of the Nazi Party and Hitler. During WWII, the banking house of Prescott Bush and George H. Walker profited from companies that used slave labor at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Then, after the war, these forefathers of President George Bush helped launder Nazi loot in the U.S. U.S. intelligence agencies were then complicit in covering their tracks."
Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade
http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/54/54.htm

I wonder how GW's Israeli hosts would have received his speech if this knowledge had been more widely-known?

McCain channels Bush's adolescent narcissism to demonstrate that you're never too old to be a puerile moron. Keep it up!

Obama's judgement is sound. In fact he needs only to look at what they do and evaluate it. He said as much. Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwHu-LZKhfU

I can understand how somebody might feel that the the timing was wrong or that "on foreign soil" aspect was overplayed, but I do not agree one bit with either critique.

It was refreshing to hear from Biden, and Nancy Pelosi was withering. Hillary played it nicely too, and we should all be appreciative.

Then Barack Obama hit the ball way out of the park. Fantastic comeback, brilliant and electrifying. For me, it is a disgrace for Bush to be cheapening the office of Presidency by using the Israeli anniversary forum for idiotic domestic niggling. I personally don't think it is a small issue -- the Presidency belongs to us and not him, and he has no business diminishing its dignity. It is another Bush failure, showing incompetence and boorishness embarassing to us all and belittling to our institutions, all so he can get in his petty, incoherent dig. And that is substance, not form.

Bush goes to Israel on the anniversary of their founding and -- gratuitously -- says that appeasing Hitler was a bad idea. Obama is shocked, shocked that he Obama is being attacked. Outside of the fact Bush has been saying things like this before Obama was elected to the Senate it probably was directed at Obama.

Now in his response Obama lays out only three facts about what Obama himself would do:

1. America should stop threatening the world.

2. Obama will got to Iran and talk tough and make it clear to them that they face a carrot and stick situation -- if Iran drops its nuclear aims they can rejoin the world. (I'm not real clear why Obama thinks they don't already know that.)

3. Obama will take our troops out of Iran -- no mention what considerations will determin how this is done.

FINALLY a Dem seems to have learned the one Roveian strategy worth knowing: go after their (perceived) strengths. As his speech easily makes clear, they are very vulnerable on nat'l security and foreign policy; only the MSM Master Narrative has kept the lid on as to just how vulnerable. It is deeply refreshing to hear this attack, especially after the appalling frustration of watching Kerry stumble and fumble and mumble his backtracking way into a cul de sac on this stuff last time around. I love the way he just easily dismantled the foundations under the issue they think they own, and skipping no opportunity to super-glue St John and President 28% undetachably together.

Any other Patrick O'Brian fans out there? I'm minded of Jack Aubry's favorite quote from Lord Nelson: "Never mind maneuvers, go straight at em!" More like this please.