Pesky You Tube

Bet Senator Susan Collins wasn’t expecting this tape to come out as she justifies her reelection to a third term.

A letter to Obama

Mike Stark’s open letter to Obama:

An Open Letter to Senator ObamaFrom the 15,000+ (and rapidly growing) members of the my.BarackObama.com group

“Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right“

Dear Senator Obama,

On October 24, 2007, your campaign spokesman said, “To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

On June 20, 2008 you said, of retroactive immunity, “I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.”

As the largest grass-roots group on your campaign website, my.BarackObama.com, and in the spirit of your open/responsive government campaign pledges, we wish to share our ideas for how we may work together to further the goal of eliminating retroactive immunity from the FISA legislation scheduled for debate in the Senate next week. Although this is only one of the problems we see with legislation allows the government to wiretap the communications of its citizenry without a warrant, it’s the area we think we can help you the most.

First, Senator Obama, we ask that you make the same tools that we used to call undecided voters in Iowa and New Hampshire available for us to call our fellow citizens in West Virginia, Nebraska, Delaware, Florida and other states that have Senators committed to voting against the amendment that would strip telecom immunity. You have the tools and we have the people power. Together, we are confident we can bring Change; we can make the government listen to the people instead of the telecom lobbyists.

Second, Senator Obama, we ask that you attend the Senate debate and schedule floor time to speak about the violence done to the rule of law when Congress retroactively immunizes the illegal conduct of a special interest. We know you understand that justice should not be sold to the highest special interest bidder; we also know that you can persuade other Senators that are not so clear on the issue. Of course, if you do this, our committed members will surely capture the video of your inspiring oratory, load it to YouTube and spread your words to our friends and family far and wide. We trust in your ability to bring a new way of doing business to Washington and look forward to helping you make that Change a reality.

Senator Obama, the my.BarackObama.com caption reads, “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington… I’m asking you to believe in yours.” We’re ready to put these words into practice.

Thank you.

The 15,000+ (and rapidly growing) members of
“Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right”

Flip flop du jour

TPM Election Central has a good summary of Obama’s changing positions on FISA.

Expanding the race

Bet McCain’s people wouldn’t have expected this a year ago.  Et u Montana?

Barack Obama is leading John McCain by five percentage points in Montana. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state shows Obama attracting 48% of the vote while McCain earns 43%.

Ends and means

Sometimes don’t add up.  Another reason to be concerned is Obama’s lurch to the right on faith based initiatives.

But hey, who  cares if the people most desperately in need of help get screwed, right? We’ll just pretend that the “faith-based” charities don’t discriminate, if that will help to get Obama elected.

Going on the offensive

An Obama ad running on Christian evangelical stations.

Interesting.  I’m sure, as others have noted, this will just encourage the religious wrong to attack Obama in the same venues, but it’s going to keep McCain on the defensive and make him compete for the votes of honest Christians.

As it should be

General Clark is not backing down.  Nor should he.  What precisely is wrong about what he said?

New Ad

Courage to be Democrats

Via Greenwald:

The central problem is that if Democrats embrace the GOP framework of National Security — that “Strength” means what the GOP says it means — then that framework gets enforced and perpetuated, and it’s a framework within which Democrats can’t possibly win, because Republicans will always “out-Strength” Democrats within that framework. It’s only by challenging and disputing the underlying premises can Democrats change the way that “strength” and “weakness” are understood.

Is McCain really that dumb?

According to the Politico, Multiple Choice Mitt is at the top of the Veep list.

Ick.  As a Democrat I suppose that’s a good thing, but still… 

An unpopular truth

Great piece at Pandagon on how to deal with the people who seem to be impervious to facts.

As a fellow Middle American, let me step up and say this: if you believe that Obama is a Muslim, unpatriotic, a terrorist, not born in America, any of the various rumors floating around about him, you are an ignorant, bigoted asshole giving in to the worst temptations of society, no matter how coddled they are by people unwilling to offend you lest they seem like the sort of elitist who doesn’t obsess over whether or not Negroes with funny names are going to kill you in your sleep. Facts don’t seem to work, so I’m more than willing to try abject shame for being unrepentant dumbassery.

Atrios observes:

Once upon a time in blogland, which was 3 million years ago in blogtime, back around the time when Howard Dean was ANGRY and all of his supporters were possessed by BUSH DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, completely blinded by irrational hatred and anger, there was a lot of talk about how assholes like me needed to be nicer and sweeter in order to reach out to those nice Midwestern folks who didn’t read my sucky blog anyway. But the fact is that much of our politics has for some years been unrepentant dumbassery, even if much of it comes out of the mouths of leading mainstream media figures like Brian Williams and Maureen Dowd. There’s no reasoning with it, no being nice to it. It isn’t useful to simply throw up an argument or competing narrative.

Some valid questions.  There comes a time beyond which there really isn’t any purpose to rational, polite discussion.  Some people are impervious to logic and we should stop pretending otherwise.

Spanking Keith

Keith Olbermann normally does a good job, but he appears to have drunk enough of the Obama koolaid that he’s incapable of being objective, as seen by his fawning coverage of Obama’s FISA retrenchment. 

Olbermann makes the mistake of going head to head with Greenwald.  Here’s an excerpt of Greenwald’s response.

What is most disturbing here is that people (including Olbermann) who for so long have vehemently criticized Democratic leaders for capitulating to Bush and trampling on the Constitution out of fear of looking “Weak” are now invoking that very excuse to justify what Obama is doing here (that’s what Olbermann explicitly did in his Kos reply). To excuse Obama’s conduct on that basis is to perpetuate Democratic complicity. Obama had — and will continue to have — a critical opportunity to reject and debunk that rancid framework, and it is his embrace of that framework here (”I’m going to give Bush what he wants and trample on the Constitution in order to avoid being ‘weak’”) that makes what Obama has done here so harmful and worthy of criticism.

Beyond that, there’s just no getting around the fact that the bill Obama is supporting is another nail in the coffin of Fourth Amendment protections and privacy rights, and — just as bad, if not worse — will almost certainly put an end to any opportunity to find out what Bush’s illegal spying entailed and to obtain a judicial ruling as to its illegality. This isn’t just another bad bill. It marks a disgraceful end — a cover-up — of one of the most extreme Bush lawbreaking scandals (combined with legalization of many of the criminal acts), and it is a disgraceful conclusion for which Democrats are largely responsible. It’s possible that Obama couldn’t have stopped it even with vigorous opposition — though it’s also possible that, as the leader of the Party, he could have — but either way, he is supporting not just a bad bill, but one that stomps on core constitutional liberties and which conceals and protects rampant lawbreaking.

I’ve written endlessly on all of the reasons why a John McCain presidency would be disastrous for this country. The entire last chapter of my book is devoted exclusively to documenting that fact. I have no doubt I will write much more on that topic between now and November. I still think that just as strongly. But basic honesty and adherence to one’s core political values compels criticism for what Obama is doing here, and it’s just distasteful and destructive — not to mention dangerous — for people to invoke patently false rationalizations in order to excuse or support what he’s doing.

Read the whole thing in full.

Most ironic headline

From ABC News:

Dobson to Attack Obama Tuesday for Distorting the Bible, Having a “Fruitcake” Interpretation of the Constitution.

The mind reels.

Unsubtle

Not bad, just unsubtle.

This is playing in 14 states, the majority of them red.  Poor John McCain.

Straight talk

Vote Obama