Obama Extols Community Service

Thursday, December 6, 2007

'A LARGER AMERICAN STORY'

Obama Extols Community Service

DES MOINES -- Barack Obama, addressing students Wednesday at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, laid out a vision of a more service-oriented future that includes expanding the AmeriCorps program, doubling the size of the Peace Corps, establishing an "America's Voice" initiative to recruit and train Americans to speak foreign languages, and enlisting more people over age 55 in community service.

"Through service, I found a community that embraced me, a church to belong to, citizenship that was meaningful, the direction I'd been seeking," said the Democratic senator from Illinois, according to an excerpt released by the campaign. "Through service, I found that my own improbable story fit into a larger American story."

-- Anne E. Kornblut

THE MUSLIM RUMOR

Clinton Volunteer Out Over Obama E-Mail

Hillary Clinton's campaign asked one of its volunteer county coordinators in Iowa to step down after reports surfaced indicating the person forwarded an e-mail falsely stating that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Obama is a Christian and attends Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, but chain e-mails have been circulating that falsely describe him as a Muslim.

"There is no place in our campaign or any campaign for this kind of politics," Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle said in a statement that was posted Wednesday morning on the liberal blog Daily Kos. "A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it. Let me be clear: No one should be engaging in this. We are asking this volunteer county coordinator to step down and are making it clear to every person involved in our campaign that this will not be tolerated."

The coordinator was not named in Solis Doyle's statement. The Clinton campaign's statement, which said the claim has been "investigated," came in response to a posting on Daily Kos from a person who identified himself as a supporter of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). "Over the past week or so, I have received two of the most hateful hit pieces on Obama parroting right wing talking points," the person wrote on the Kos site Wednesday.

"One was forwarded to me from a Clinton county chair. . . . They both repeat the Obama/Osama crap, and the 'madrassa' charges. And there is the conclusion that Obama is a mole whose intention is to make a Muslim revolution in the US. I have replied with factual citations and a suggestion that those people are doing their candidate no good by spreading the hate."

A conservative magazine reported earlier this year Obama attended a madrassa, a kind of Islamic school, a charge that CNN and other outlets found to be untrue. Obama himself has publicly denounced the false charge that he is a "Muslim plant."

"I just think that the Iowa caucus-goer is looking for an honest and real debate about their issues -- health care, education, how kids are going to finance their way through college, how do we keep jobs here, solving the immigration problem and getting our troops home from Iraq," Obama said in a statement. "If other folks want to engage in those kinds of small-time tactics then that's their prerogative, but that's not what we're going to focus on."

-- Perry Bacon Jr.

ECONOMIC PROPOSALS

Clinton and Edwards Tackle Mortgage Crisis

Two leading Democratic candidates introduced proposals to help stem the national mortgage crisis just as President Bush prepared to unveil his own program on the issue this week.

Hillary Clinton traveled to Wall Street on Wednesday to speak to business leaders and deliver an address describing a litany of economic worries plaguing Americans far from Lower Manhattan -- including rising gas prices, stagnant wages and, most significantly, a housing crisis that she said risks forcing people out of their homes. She also appeared on the business network CNBC for an extended interview about her economic viewpoint with anchor Maria Bartiromo.

Clinton said "these economic problems are certainly not all Wall Street's fault -- not by a long shot."

"But the reality of our interconnected economy is that what happens on Wall Street impacts main streets across America. If we're honest, we need to acknowledge that Wall Street has played a significant role in the current problems," she said, citing a flawed bond rating system and irresponsible lending practices as among the industry's contributions. "Wall Street helped create the foreclosure crisis, and Wall Street needs to help solve it," Clinton said in her speech. She proposed suspending any changes on subprime loans -- often made to borrowers with weak credit -- for five years to avoid new foreclosures caused by adjustable-rate mortgages.

In a similar move, but with an approach his aides said is more sweeping, former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.) proposed requiring lenders to help homeowners who have fallen behind on mortgage payments, either by changing adjustable-rate mortgages to fixed-rate ones, lowering interest rates or another method. "Dangerous mortgages have put millions of families in jeopardy of losing their homes," he said in a statement. "It's time for Washington to stop taking care of banks and their lobbyists and act decisively to help regular families."

With the Iowa caucuses nearing, Clinton took time away from campaigning in early-voting states to make her address; her advisers, however, said it is a message that they expect to resonate among middle-class workers in the early-voting states and help bolster her image as a strong, experienced leader.

-- Anne E. Kornblut