February 19, 2008 04:07 PM
On the front page of Tuesday's Washington Post was an article detailing how in late January U.S. forces, acting with autonomy inside Pakistan, were able to target and kill Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander.
The strike, which came without the Pakistani government's knowledge and helped eliminate an individual who had long eluded the spy-agency's capture, was an obvious boon in the War on Terror. But the political implications of the operation were just as fascinating.
In August, Sen. Barack Obama had made the argument that, as president, he would target Al Qaeda officials in Pakistan even without the country's acquiescence -- the type of attack that, six months later, proved to be successful.
At the time, Obama was roundly criticized for his remarks, both by his Democratic competitors for the White House and by the Bush administration.
"We think that our approach to Pakistan is not only one that respects the sovereignty of Pakistan, but also is designed so that we are working in cooperation," said then-Press Secretary Tony Snow.
And just one week ago, President Bush himself lambasted Obama's approach to foreign affairs.
"I certainly don't know what he believes in," Bush said on February 10, about Obama. "The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he's going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad."
To be sure, not everything is known about the extent and execution of the CIA's operation. But, on the surface, it carries similarities to Obama's stated approach towards Pakistan's terrorism problem, the same approach Bush trivialized.
Here is Obama's August 2 statement at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars:
"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges... But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. ... If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will."
In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone's operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.
The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.
It is an approach that some U.S. officials say could be used more frequently this year, particularly if a power vacuum results from yesterday's election and associated political tumult. The administration also feels an increased sense of urgency about undermining al-Qaeda before President Bush leaves office, making it less hesitant, said one official familiar with the incident.
Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.
RECENTLY BILL CLINTON HAS BEEN DECLARING THAT HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN OPPOSED TO THE WAR IN IRAQ....?????
watch video
A sign supporting Senator Barack Obama on Primary Day in Harlem. Some districts reported that no one had voted for him.
Black voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.
That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district.
City election officials this week said that their formal review of the results, which will not be completed for weeks, had confirmed some major discrepancies between the vote totals reported publicly — and unofficially — on primary night and the actual tally on hundreds of voting machines across the city.
In the Harlem district, for instance, where the primary night returns suggested a 141 to 0 sweep by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the vote now stands at 261 to 136. In an even more heavily black district in Brooklyn — where the vote on primary night was recorded as 118 to 0 for Mrs. Clinton — she now barely leads, 118 to 116.
The history of New York elections has been punctuated by episodes of confusion, incompetence and even occasional corruption. And election officials and lawyers for both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton agree that it is not uncommon for mistakes to be made by weary inspectors rushing on election night to transcribe columns of numbers that are delivered first to the police and then to the news media.
That said, in a presidential campaign in which every vote at the Democratic National Convention may count, a swing of even a couple of hundred votes in New York might help Mr. Obama gain a few additional delegates.
City election officials said they were convinced that there was nothing sinister to account for the inaccurate initial counts, and The Times’s review found a handful of election districts in the city where Mrs. Clinton received zero votes in the initial results.
“It looked like a lot of the numbers were wrong, probably the result of human error,” said Marcus Cederqvist, who was named executive director of the Board of Elections last month. He said such discrepancies between the unofficial and final count rarely affected the raw vote outcome because “they’re not usually that big.”
On primary night, Mrs. Clinton was leading with 57 percent to Mr. Obama’s 40 percent in New York State, which meant she stood to win 139 delegates to Mr. Obama’s 93, with 49 others known as superdelegates going to the national convention unaffiliated.
Jerome A. Koenig, a former chief of staff to the State Assembly’s election law committee and a lawyer for the Obama campaign, suggested that some of the discrepancy resulted from the design of the ballot.
Candidates were listed from left to right in an order selected by drawing lots. Mrs. Clinton was first, followed by Gov. Bill Richardson and Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., who in most election districts received zero votes, and by John Edwards, who got relatively few. Mr. Obama was fifth, just before Representative Dennis J. Kucinich.
Mr. Koenig said he seriously doubted that anything underhanded was at work because local politicians care more about elections that matter specifically to them.
“They steal votes for elections like Assembly District leader, where people have a personal stake,” he said.
A number of political leaders also scoffed at the possibility that local politicians, even if they considered it vital that Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton prevail in the primary, were capable of even trying to hijack such a contest.
Still, for those inclined to consider conspiracy theories, the figures provided plenty of grist.
The 94th Election District in Harlem, for instance, sits within the Congressional district represented by Charles B. Rangel, an original supporter of Mrs. Clinton.
Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, a Clinton supporter who represents the same area, said he was confident that there was an innocent explanation for the original count giving Mr. Obama zero votes.
“I’m sure it’s a clerical error of some sort,” Mr. Wright said. “Being around elections for the last 25 years, no candidate receives zero votes.”
But Gordon J. Davis, a former New York City parks commissioner and an Obama poll watcher in the district, remained skeptical, even after being informed of the corrected count.
“First it was reported at 141 to 0, now it’s 261 to 136 in an Assembly district that went 12,000 to 8,000 for Barack,” Mr. Davis said on Friday.
“I was watching like a hawk, but how did I know the machine had a mind of its own?” he added. “And I speak as one who grew up on the South Side of Chicago where we delivered the margin of victory for John F. Kennedy at 4 in the morning.”
At the sprawling Riverside Park Community apartments at Broadway and 135th Street, Alician D. Barksdale said she had voted for Mr. Obama and her daughter had, too, by absentee ballot.
“Everyone around here voted for him,” she said.
The 53rd Assembly District, in Brooklyn, is represented by the borough’s Democratic chairman, Assemblyman Vito P. Lopez, another Clinton supporter. He said the party faithful have produced lopsided margins of as much as 160 to 4 and that on Primary Day he fielded election captains in every district to galvanize Hispanic voters for Mrs. Clinton.
“We ran it the old-fashioned way,” he said. Still, he said, the 118 to 0 vote “has to be a mistake.”
At the Archive, a cafe and video store on the border of Bushwick and East Williamsburg, the manager, Brad Lee, agreed. “There were Obama posters in everyone’s windows,” he said. “There was even Obama graffiti.”
Most election-night anomalies are later reconciled by the official canvass of the machines and in the formal count of absentee returns and of paper affidavit ballots issued on Primary Day, to people who do not appear to be eligible but demand the right to vote, and later validated.
On Feb. 5, Mrs. Clinton carried 61 of the state’s 62 counties but won Brooklyn by a margin of less than 2 percent. Because delegates are awarded proportionately on the basis of the primary vote in each Congressional district, Obama supporters expressed hope that if the official count continued in their favor, they might gain an additional delegate or two.
Kate Hammer and Robin Stein contributed reporting.
On Monday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's "universal" health-care plan was shot down by a committee in the state's Senate, 7-1. The most vociferous opponents were not fiscal conservatives, but labor unions that launched a last-minute revolt against its most crucial feature: an individual mandate that would have forced everyone to buy coverage.
This defeat has national political implications. Hillary Clinton, for example, has denounced Barack Obama for refusing to include an individual mandate in his health-care plan. Yet many California unions argued that a mandate would force uninsured, middle-income working families to divert money from more pressing needs toward coverage whose price and quality they cannot control.
The unions are correct: This is exactly what is happening in Massachusetts, where Mitt Romney enacted a similar plan two years ago as governor. (And Mr. Romney's plan is the inspiration for both the Schwarzenegger and Clinton plans.) The experience in the Bay State deserves a lot more scrutiny than it has been getting.
Massachusetts uses a sliding income scale to subsidize coverage for everyone up to 300% of the poverty level -- or a family of four making around $60,000. Everyone over that limit is required to pay for their own coverage if their employers don't provide it. All this has inflated demand, which, combined with onerous regulations on insurance suppliers, has triggered premium increases of 12% for this year -- double last year's national average.
No one is escaping the financial sting. The state health-care bill for fiscal 2008-2009 is expected to touch $400 million -- 85% more than originally projected. Still the state won't be able to fully shield those it subsidizes from the premium increases. But uninsured folks who don't qualify for government help really get pounded. Before the hike, the cheapest plan for uninsured couples in their 50s cost $8,200 annually. Now, unless government bureaucrats hand them an exemption, they might well find it cheaper to pay the penalty -- up to half the price of a standard policy -- than purchase insurance. That is, pay to remain uninsured. This is legalized extortion: TonySopranoCare.
The government response to rising premiums is, unsurprisingly, price controls. The Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority -- the bureaucracy created to oversee RomneyCare -- is considering prohibiting underwriters from raising premiums more than 5% for unsubsidized plans, meanwhile requiring them to cover 40-odd benefits from hair prostheses to chiropractic services. If companies can't scale back coverage, they'll have to compromise care; and the Connector is perfectly willing to assist.
As reported in the Boston Globe, the Connector is encouraging insurance companies to include only a limited network of cheaper physicians and facilities in some plans to hold down premiums. Patients who wish to see more expensive providers will have to dig into their own pockets. Dr. Steffie Wollhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, worries that the Connector will revive Gov. Romney's original idea of enrolling poor people in plans that only offer access to neighborhood health centers ill-equipped to treat anything beyond routine ailments. Forcing people to buy substandard care they cannot afford is not universal care, she says. "It is a hoax." And so Massachusetts is marching toward a system of two-tiered medicine -- the alleged market inequity that universal care is supposed to cure.
How about enforcing the mandate? In Massachusetts, non-compliers lose their personal tax exemption -- about $220 -- the first year, followed by fines in subsequent years. California was planning to garnish the wages or impose liens on the mortgages of the uninsured to pay for coverage. "This bill was like telling someone who is in need of help, 'I'm going to give you food, but I'm going to take away your clothes," Leland Yee, a Democratic senator from San Francisco, told the California Chronicle.
The problems with RomneyCare have prompted Mr. Romney himself to abandon it. And Mr. Obama is surely correct that part of the reason 45 million Americans are uninsured is not that no one is forcing them to buy it, but that they can't afford it. It may be too much to hope that Mr. Obama would embrace market-oriented measures -- such as deregulating insurance markets, giving patients more control over their health care dollars, and fixing the federal tax code to let individuals, like employers, buy health coverage with pre-tax dollars -- to bring down insurance costs. But unlike Mrs. Clinton, he at least seems to understand the perverse side effects of an individual mandate.
Should Hillary Clinton ever be in a position to bully people into buying coverage, a coalition of labor and fiscal conservatives might well do to HillaryCare what it just did to GovernatorCare.
Ms. Dalmia is a senior analyst at the Reason Foundation.
See all of today's editorials and op-eds, plus video commentary, on The Editorial Page.
And add your comments to the opinionjournal.com forum here.
Obama, Japan, roots for accidental namesake
by Shaun Tandon Tue Feb 12, 2:15 AM ET
OBAMA, Japan (AFP) - Barack Obama, who has been credited with tapping support in unlikely places, is enjoying a groundswell of enthusiasm in a small city in western Japan, which is delighted to share his name.
ADVERTISEMENT
Obama, Japan, is rooting for candidate Obama, hoping that if he becomes the US president he will put this ancient fishing town of 32,000 people firmly on the tourist map and, just maybe, choose it for an international summit.
Supporters in Obama -- which means "small shore" in Japanese -- have held parties to watch election results, put up posters wishing the senator luck and plan a special batch of the town's "manju" sweets bearing his likeness.
"At first we were more low-key as Hillary Clinton looked to be ahead, but now we see he is getting more popular," Obama Mayor Toshio Murakami said.
"I give him an 80 percent chance of becoming president," the 75-year-old said with a proud grin.
Murakami sent a letter last year to Obama, enclosing a set of lacquer chopsticks, a famous product of this town on the Sea of Japan (East Sea) in Fukui prefecture's Wakasa region.
"I will present you the chopsticks of Wakasa paint and I am glad if you use it habitually," Murakami said in the English-language letter. "I wish you the best of health and success."
Murakami noted that Barack Obama's birthday, August 4, happens to be "Chopsticks Day" in the city.
Obama, who is also a hero in his father's native Kenya, has been gaining in a neck-and-neck race with Clinton, in part by winning over voters in states that rarely back members of their Democratic party.
Murakami is now preparing another package for the candidate that will include a good-luck charm from the local Obama Shrine.
"For the first letter I found his address on the Internet, so I don't know if he got it," Murakami said. "But this time I asked the (US) embassy for his exact address, so I'm sure he'll get it."
Lest cynics find the city's efforts naive, it was Obama himself who first drew attention to the connection.
Obama, speaking to Japan's TBS network in December 2006, said that when he flew once to Tokyo, an officer stamping his passport told him of the town.
"He looked up and said, 'I'm from Obama,'" the senator said.
A professor saw the footage and contacted the mayor, who insists that his support for Obama goes beyond just his name.
"It seems to me that President Bush isn't aggressively addressing global warming, but Obama would. And I like how he opposed the Iraq war," he said.
Murakami also hoped a President Obama would sign a peace treaty with North Korea. It is no small issue in Obama, one of the seaside towns where agents from the communist state kidnapped Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s, setting off a long row between the countries.
The election is being closely followed by many in 1,500-year-old Obama, a port nestled by snowy hills that in ancient times supplied food to the emperor when he lived in Kyoto some 75 kilometres (40 miles) to the south.
"When you look in Obama's eyes and hear his voice, he's very impressive," said resident Rieko Tanaka.
"Hillary is a bit old-fashioned and she's the wife of Bill Clinton, so I think a new person should lead the USA," she said.
Tomoyuki Ueda, 40, a company worker dining at a restaurant serving the town's celebrated mackerel, said it would be healthy for the United States to elect its first African-American president.
"I think both Obama and Hillary are qualified, but if Obama becomes president he could correct problems of racial discrimination," he said.
Seiji Fujihara, a head of the local tourism board, said he has only met a black person once, but believed Obama's election would make the United States "more equal" on racial issues.
Fujihara started a club for self-styled Obama supporters in the city and plans "I love Obama" T-shirts.
"We know we can't vote. But if we send out a message, we can help push him to victory," he said.
''We are one people.'' It is easy to say, but we have struggled over it for 232 years. The charismatic speaker, who once wrestled with his biracial identity and found his footing as a community organizer in south Chicago, brings a conviction that gives people goosebumps. It is a vision that clashes with the hard truth voiced by Bruce Springsteen: ''No secret my friend / You can get killed just for living in / Your American skin.'' Barack Obama knows it is hard, and includes GLBT Americans in his call to action.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) points out that Martin Luther King was 34 when he said, ''I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.''' Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he drafted that creed. If Obama wins, he will be 47 at his inauguration -- a year older than Bill Clinton, four years older than Jack Kennedy, five years older than Teddy Roosevelt. His toughness is evident in his remarkable coolness in the face of smears by the Clintons.
To be sure, Obama has fought back against those attacks. Former President Clinton, who switches between charming elder statesman and eager practitioner of win-at-any-cost politics, blamed the divisiveness on Obama and the media, and used civil-rights veterans John Lewis and Andrew Young as trump cards instead of addressing charges that he was behaving like the late GOP operative Lee Atwater. Those who fault Obama for fighting back must have admired Kerry's month of silence after the ''swiftboat'' attacks in 2004.
Obama notes that the Clintons' attacks began only after he started rising in the polls. One of his central messages is, ''Change doesn't come from the top down, but from the bottom up.'' By contrast, Hillary Clinton implicitly compared herself to Lyndon Johnson, emphasizing his key role in passing civil-rights legislation. What was patronizing about that comment was the implication that change chiefly depends on Washington politicians.
Obama raised a stronger vision of leadership on Jan. 20 at King's own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, with a speech of rare grace and power. At one point, after saying ''none of our hands are entirely clean,'' he admonished his audience: ''We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.'' This was not pandering.
Obama challenges gay people as well by refusing to respond to opponents of gay equality with boycotts. As he wrote in response to the controversy over a campaign appearance by antigay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, ''We will not secure full equality for all LGBT Americans until we learn how to address that deep disagreement and move beyond it.'' He understands that our cause requires many painful discussions, not demands for silence from those whose views offend us. He shows the way by talking to churches and ministers about homophobia.
If you are not careful, life can beat the hope out of you. Some activists I know, old enough to remember the '60s, support Hillary. They have pictures of King and Bobby Kennedy on their walls, yet now back someone more reminiscent of Richard Nixon. Instead of supporting a leader who can inspire a broad spectrum of Americans, they support someone whose idea of the presidency is managing the bureaucracy, and whose idea of bipartisanship is co-sponsoring a measure against flag burning.
Some claim that Obama lacks detailed policy proposals. They should visit BarackObama.com. Others hesitate to support him because they worry about what might happen to him. But if we are governed by our fears, we are defeating ourselves.
The times call for a leader who offers more than a continuation of the scorched-earth politics of the past two decades -- someone who will do more than triangulate and outmaneuver partisans on the other side. Once again a gifted man from Illinois has come forth who understands that a nation divided against itself cannot stand, who exhorts us to summon the best in ourselves to continue the work of building our nation. I will not lower my sights because the work is hard. That is why I support Barack Obama for president.
Richard J. Rosendall can be reached at rrosendall@starpower.net.
January 24, 2008
Front Page > World > Article Title/Fixture Title
Editorial
Front Page > Editorial
Page 1 of 2 next | Email | Print | Subscribe
A GOP ace in the hole?
By Mark Goodman
Beyond the melodrama of Sen. Hillary Clinton's tears-on-her-pillow triumph in New Hampshire and her gaming victory in Nevada lies the profoundly disturbing question of the Clintons' hidden record of suspected crimes.
It's that very record which likely prompted Sen. John Kerry's sudden endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama just two days after Mrs. Clinton's first primary win, followed by two more supportive votes from ranking congressional Democrats.
Their swift response was a clear sign that ranking Democratic colleagues are determined to derail Mrs. Clinton. Why? Because there exists a vault of information American voters are not aware of concerning the Clintons — information which should have been brought to the nation's attention well before the kickoff of the 2008 presidential campaign.
The bedeviling problem is that party leaders on both sides of the congressional aisle conspired two years ago to bury the telltale documents. I'm referring to the 120 missing pages of the Barrett Report which, by all accounts from Washington insiders, former press secretary Tony Snow among them, contain sufficient evidence of Clinton misdeeds not only to furl Mrs. Clinton's presidential flag but quite possibly to send her and her miscreant husband straight to the courtroom dock. Yet the papers have lain moldering in some deep Capitol Hill tomb with no one daring to dig them up though they can be exhumed on demand by any member of Congress.
How could this happen? Let's go back to January 2006, when the 684-page report was finally released absent the incriminating pages. David Barrett, a Washington lawyer, had been appointed by the D.C. Court of Appeals to investigate allegations of misconduct on the part of Henry Cisneros, President Clinton's Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Mr. Barrett then spent nine frustrating years watching his inquiry blocked at every turn by the IRS, the Justice Department and Clinton attorneys.
Ironically, the detours led him into a thicket of apparent Clinton crimes and misdemeanors largely revolving around the misuse of the IRS and Justice Department to punish their enemies — abuses that apparently persisted even after Bill Clinton's term of office ended in 2000. Before Mr. Barrett could release the report, three Democrats, Mr. Kerry, Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Byron Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat, managed to redact the potentially damaging pages by attaching a rider to an unrelated appropriations bill. Furious, Mr. Barrett issued a statement saying, "An accurate title for the report would be, 'What We Were Prevented from Investigating.' "
What indeed. The papers must have been devastating. Why grasp at the desperate straw of redaction? Still, the Democrats had to realize they were merely buying time. Suppressed evidence cannot remain suppressed forever and the Republicans are well aware of the wild card they have in the hole. Odds are that's why no Republican congressman has as yet unearthed the missing pages: The Republicans are banking on Mrs. Clinton, the scenario goes, to win the Democratic nomination so they can bake her in Mr. Barrett's oven in the election campaign.
If there is any doubt about Democratic fears, witness the timing of Mr. Kerry's lightning sweep into South Carolina to trumpet his support for Mr. Obama. It's fair to conclude from this that Mr. Kerry, the party's premier spokesman as well as the principal sponsor of the redaction rider, threw his weight behind Mr. Obama at this pivotal moment because he knows, better than anyone else, where the lethal poppy fields lie along Mrs. Clinton's winding yellow-brick road.
On cue, California's Rep. George Miller, a 33-year Democratic veteran of the House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's devoted confidante, quickly echoed Mr. Kerry's support for Mr. Obama. Next, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a 33-year veteran of the Senate, rang in with his Obama endorsement. So, the picture sharpens into focus: The Democratic establishment, which considered it too risky to put its chips on Mr. Obama in 2006, plainly reckons that it need not — indeed dare not — gamble any further on Mrs. Clinton in 2008.
The Clintons do not suffer rejection gladly. The collective rebuke Mrs. Clinton sustained surely explains why, as Mr. Clinton ratcheted up his Obama-bashing in South Carolina on Monday, she followed in the evening's debate by cross-examining her worthy national rival as if he were an unworthy county defendant. It seemed poor local politics to beat up in open forum on a black opponent in a state filled with black Democrats; backroom bets say she was letting her colleagues know, before a television audience, that their preferred candidate was in for a nasty 15 rounds.
The long view is that Mrs. Clinton and her loose-cannon regent have slid by far too long on foul play aided by diminished expectations (they're supposed to be ruthless). Now they're pointed on a collision course with political disaster. It's therefore time for Mr. Kerry and his Democratic colleagues to redress their misbegotten rescue of two years ago by opening up the concealed evidence on the Clintons for inspection by American voters.
Mark Goodman is a veteran journalist and author of the novel "Hurrah for the Next Man Who Dies."
Page 2 of 2 << back | Email | Print
PLEASE JOIN OUR MOVEMENT AND HELP US ELECT SENATOR BARACK OBAMA OUR NEXT PRESIDENT...AMERICA OUR MOMENT IS NOW!
Video by Bjameo
My original Virtual Orchestra composition-music video "Obama Portrait" expresses the deep respect, and fervent hope, I have for him as the next president of the United States.
Get a higher quality version and the music track alone for free at my site www.bjarneo.com
Yes, We Can! - Si, Se Puede!Song & video, featuring a star cast, by Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas. Inspired by Barack Obama's 'Yes We Can' speech.
