although i don't think a lot of obama folks will bleed off into unity 08. i believe obama people love him for his "charisma" and for the idea of a (sort of) black president. unity 08 has none of that.

Good arguments. But the thought I'm really trying to propagate is "conflict free is substance free" ...

And did you listen to the YouTube? Edwards says stuff like (quoting the slightly truncated quote from Big Orange): "My view is, you give them a seat at the table, they eat all the food! You cannot compromise with these people. They are very, very good. When you negotiate with them, they win. You have to beat them. You have to take them on."

Amen. We did pretty well the last time we had a really smart Southern lawyer in the White House, as I recall. I'm just hoping Hillary, by manipulating the early primary voting, doesn't lock up the nomination before everybody else gets a fair shot.)

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

it applies to so much of what's wrong. the drumbeat of Civility has been one of the more infuriating aspects of media content, these last six years. it's killing people, literally, and it has to stop.

... and Obama didn't take the bait, it is consistent with his spiel about "partisanship."

Good meme, let's hope it prospers.

There is a strange impulse many people have to promote a perverse sort of let-it-go "healing" when dealing with a cancerous situation.

Years ago on "60 Minutes," they did a segment about an ex-Nazi honcho who was living in NYC. They had people in a nearby bar saying things like "hasn't he suffered enough?" though apparently the only suffering he seemed to have encountered was living in a city with a huge Jewish population and being unable to do anything about it.

Ditto for all the "let it go" crap we still hear about Florida 2000. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead or wounded because of that, but we're supposed to let it go.

Those who rape the Constitution are partisan, but heaven forbid if its defenders don't reach across that aisle, hat in hand.

Obama names RILFs (Repubs he'd like to fuck), including Tom "Faith-based" Coburn.

The lameness, it burns!

he should call the unity 08 people if he's that interested in a republican reacharound luvfest.

... (or "around," CD, ick) then I have to say I don't think much of it.

But give the guy credit. He certainly appreciates the awsum power of teh gay agenda, because he thinks about it all the time.

We. Are. Going. To. Die. We must restore hope in the world. We must bring forth a new way of living that can sustain the world. Or else it is not just us who will die but everyone. What have we got to lose? Go forth and Fight!—Xan

Reach out to all the Republicans you want, once you are elected, reach out to them to join you and those who elected you on the vision you put before them of where and how you intend to govern this country.

I couldn't believe that Obama allowed himself to be cornered into naming Republican names.

This is not about personal relationships; I'm quite prepared to accept that Tom Coburn is a fine husband, father, friend, and colleague. This is about governance, public policy, restoring the constitution at home, restoring American values in our foreign policy, including reaching beyond the beltway consensus that assumes all security issues are also military ones.

The comments to the Think Progress piece Lambert linked to have some further revelations about the extreme nature of Coburn's ideas:

Coburn on Oscar-winnner Schindler’s List: NBC’s airing of Schindler’s list took television “to an all-time low, with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity…I cringe when I realize that there were children all across this nation watching this program.”

Comment by Bluegirl

Coburn claimed lesbianism was so “rampant” in the public schools that in some schools “they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom” at a time. School administrators had *no* idea what he was talking about.

Comment by Veronica

“Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That’s a gay agenda.”

Um, Why would gay people care about Abortion? Is this irrational or am I just not seeing things with the clarity that he does?

My understanding is that Abortions can be used to terminate unwanted Pregnancies. Unwanted Pregnancies are caused by Heterosexual sex without using Birth Control. Homosexual sex cannot cause Pregnancies.

Therefore, Abortion has nothing to do with any gay agenda. Although it is possible that gay people are generally speaking more supportive of Abortion…
Please, help me, I don’t understand!!!

Z.

I have always found it odd that he favors the death penalty for doctors that have performed abortions since he himself would be on that list. Being from Muskogee, like Little Tommy Coburn, as he is called in the circle of politicos in Oklahoma, has never hid the fact that he has done an operation that he now advocates putting to death those that have provided a service to their patients. But his blatant hypocrisy is nothing new to people from the old Congressional District 2, he never saw a pork initiative that he didn’t like when in the House. Then he ran for the Senate on a “no more pork” agenda that sounded good to the bumpkins living in the middle of the state, while the folks in the northeast of the state knew his record and overwhelmingly voted for his opponent Brad Carson.
Also, not only does he hate homosexuals, women, and anyone that doesn’t agree with his brand of “conservatism”, but he also referred to treaties the U.S. government has with American Indians as “primitive contracts made with a bunch of monkies”. As one of those “monkies” you can imagine how pleased I am with him representing me in the U.S. Senate.
Comment by Sherman — September 13, 2005 @ 3:14 pm

Seriously, we should organize an email campaign to express directly to Obama how this looks to his own base. Why isn't he spending more time defending the notion that in a large country there are going to be differences, and democratic elections are about defining those differences, as well as the commonalities, and letting the people decide who will do the best job guiding the nation toward both change, and conserving that which is best in our own history and traditions.

Not sure how to do this; his Senate office staff is legally forbidden from having anything to do with campaigning. But it could be directed at his campaign website.

Meant to add my vote to propogation-worthiness of this meme, CD. What an insulting view of Americans our beltway bluebloods have. Remember, they were sure the Republic was about to shred if we spent another day counting votes in Florida, despite the polling which showed a huge majority wanted to know who had really won the election.

Unfortunately, the beltway meme that there is something unpleasant and fatally divisive about differences has taken hold, as has, worse still, their constant equating of Republican divisiveness, i.e., Republican response to the Clinton administration, to wit, that Clinton wasn't really the President, or Bush's attitude toward Democrats, that they are as much the enemy as Al Queda, is somehow equal to Democratic belief in Social Security, a belief shared by some 70 to 80 percent of Americans.

It's taken hold as a generalized idea that makes voters and citizens weary of government because it seems trivial and so divorced from their reality, but when you get down to specifics, Americans are heartier than the beltway understands.

This sounds like a job for the word equivalation!