Lambert, December 28, 2007, Obama Stump Speech Strategy of Conciliation Considered Harmful:

Obama presents himself as unifying, but accountability is what’s needed. Let’s repeat that “reach out” paragraph:

I’ve learned in my life that you can stand firm in your principles while still reaching out to those who might not always agree with you.

Fine words butter no parsnips. What principles are we talking about, here? Off the top of my head:

1. The principle that everyone is equal before the law.

2. The principle that this nation does not torture.

3. The principle that there are three co-equal branches of government.

4. The principle that high government officials should not break the law with impunity.

5. The principle that elections are not stolen

6. The principle that war is not made on fake evidence

[To give but a few examples of how the Conservative Movement violated each principle: 1 Republican Justice Department uses criminal justice system to prosecute Democrats before elections. 2 Abu Ghraib; European gulags; Gitmo; destroyed CIA tapes. 3 Signing statements; Fourth Branch of government. 4 Scooter Libby. 5 Florida 2000; Ohio 2004. 6 Downing Street Memo (full text).]

Check that list, and start crossing off the Republicans whose actions show that they don’t share those principles, and whose principles differ from all progressives, most Democrats, and most Americans, and by the time you’re done, you’ll have about as many Republicans as would fit in an elevator. A very small, dumbwaiter-sized elevator. In fact, when the elevator door opens, you might just end up “reaching out” to empty space.

This isn’t just a matter of a “food fight,” or “disagreements.” These are not abstract agree-to-disagree issues. Violating these principles ought to entail criminal prosecution (destroyed CIA tapes, election theft), impeachment (signing statements), or whatever the remedy is for just plain evil (torture).

So at best, Obama is feeding us highflown, but vacuous rhetoric. At worst, he’ll let the Conservative Movement operatives who drive the Bush administration get away clean, after committing criminal and impeachable offenses with impunity and no accountability of any kind. That’s not the kind of politics we need to achieve a permanent progressive majority.

Sadly No, July 17, 2008, now that Obama is the presumptive nominee:  Read more 

This works for me on so, so many levels.  Read more 

I still get email from MoveOn (which I often respond to with the one-liner, “you should be ashamed of yourselves”), and today’s was a doozy. They are “launching a massive coalition campaign to win health coverage for everyone.” Planned Parenthood and “the unions” are part of the coalition.

The $40 million Health Care for America Now campaign will put 100 organizers on the ground and run major TV and newspaper ads to make sure this election is a mandate for quality, affordable health care for every American.
 Read more 

This move of the 2008 Democratic Convention to an outdoor venue for the Nominee’s acceptance speech isn’t the first time it has occurred.  Read more 

It is by now plain, to those who would see, that the post-partisan presumptive pre-president is solicitous of the GOP base (or at least the right-leaning indy/uncommitted base, if there be such a thing).

At best, he offers the Democratic base some lukew.o.r.m. attention, sleight-of-hand, and no responsiveness on policy.

What do so-called centrists and rightwing voters have that we haven’t got? Votes Obama is afraid he won’t get.

Hmmmm…..

See, this is what pisses me off about the media and their analyzation and compartmentalizing of the “average, older, white, female Clinton supporter”.

This is a clip from an opinion piece in the Sunday Oregonian by Connie Schultz. http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/ore…  Read more 

Change we can believe in:

Obama will obviously screw every single person and constituency that has ever supported him, that supports him now or that will ever support him — and he will do so in an especially blatant, in-your-face manner — if he believes it will be to his political advantage. And he knows they’ll continue to support him anyway: “So what’re you gonna do, vote Republican?  Read more 

I finally took a few minutes to read Obama’s Greatest Religion Speech Evah, and it’s at least as atrocious as one might expect. The really amazing stuff comes toward the end (no fair peeking!).

Annotated for your (and the First Amendment’s) protection.

Remarks of Senator Barack Obama
As prepared for delivery
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
Zanesville, Ohio

You know, faith based groups like East Side Community Ministry carry a particular meaning for me.  Read more 

Mike Lux writing at Open Left

I was really delighted to hear his answer to a question at the National Association of Latino Elected Officials the other day on health care.  Read more 

Obama’s bottomless pit of capitulation (via) just doesn’t end, does it?

(Slaps head)

Oh yeah, ’cause it’s bottomless!

Well, my pit of capitulation has its limits. I’ll vote for Obama when he asks for my vote. Me, a baby boomer atheist who wants a presidency that repudiates the greed-is-good Reagan-Bush-Bush Revolution.

I’m not holding my breath.

He keeps asking for me not to vote for him, and it’s high time I obliged.

David Kuo, a conservative Christian who was deputy director of Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives until 2003 and later became a critic of Bush’s commitment to the cause, said Obama’s position has the potential to be a major “Sister Souljah moment” for his campaign.

Will somebody wake me when a part of his campaign isn’t a Sister Souljah moment?  Read more 

Glenn,

I’m posting the following on correntewire.com, as an open letter to you, on the twin assumptions that our readers’ comments may further illuminate this topic and that you receive far too much e-mail for me to expect a response.  Read more 

With the incessant invocation of Supreme Court nominations (assuming there are openings over the next four years) as Obama’s trump card for skeptical progressives, I looked up his 2005 defense of Democrats who voted for John Roberts.

As usual, he cultivates the something-for-everyone Forer Effect with some really swell passages bound to please those* who don’t stop to ponder and raise a fuss about his fundamentally untrue and disempowering post-partisanship frame:  Read more 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washingt…

Obama gets his own nifty Great Seal

“…It’s an impressive looking thing that conveys a sense of the power of the top elected office in the land and, indeed, the free world.  Read more 

Withering.

There’s a lot to say about this, including the theme that will make our Paul happy — questioning the notion that we must support Obama no matter what, and also the beyond-dubious premise (by way of Greg Sargent) that “Obama’s ’candidacy has long seemed to embody a conviction that Democrats can win arguments with Republicans about national security — that if Dems stick to a set of core principles, and forcefully argue for them without blinking, they can and will persuade people that, simply put, they are right and Republicans are wrong.’”

However, I must sign off, but I wanted to share this link with you ASAP and to see what y’all make of it.

Greetings, Class of June, 2008!

One of the ironist’s bitter pleasures during these past several years has been watching the rats jump from Bush’s stinking ship at precisely the most expedient times (that is, after some great and irrevocable damage has been wrought upon our nation).

With the shocking news (brace yourselves, folks) that Barack Obama is not at all a New-Politics Progressive Savior, we’re seeing some fellow Dems in the throes of buyer’s remorse.

Reading this DailyKos thread, I don’t know precisely how to feel.  Read more 

The mildew continues to spread.

I’ve been been reading the New Yorker almost since I could read. I’m sure my parents weren’t the only parents who framed New Yorker covers for art, when they were coming up and poor. I still think of a table of contents, let alone a letters section, as innovations that pander to weak-minded readers, and I loved the five-part series on geology.* And the one on soybeans, too! The Mighty Corrente Building has Departments in homage to New Yorker; I admire—honor—revere the New Yorker, and not least because they publish Seymour Hersh.  Read more 

Glenn:

Obama has obviously calculated that sacrificing the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment is a worthwhile price to pay to bolster his standing a tiny bit in a couple of swing states.

He adds:

Nobody should be fooled by Obama’s vow to work to remove telecom amnesty from this bill.

There is a pony in here, though: Obama now cares about swing states (at least their worst elements)! I do so hope that includes FL and MI!

I am so happy!

I’m jumping on this announcement by candidate Obama, because I hope to subvert the impulses of some of my fellow Fellows and some of our readers to make of this moment a chance to accuse Barack Obama of being a liar, breaking a promise, not really being about reform, undermining efforts to reform our increasingly broken system of elections, and other ways not to like Obama that I’m not clever enough to even think of.

You don’t need to go there; the VRWC is way ahead of you. As Roy notes, there is high comedy to be had in the deep disappointment of the McCain campaign, the Republican Party, and their right-winger supporters, most of whom have bellowed long and hard against any sort of limitations on the financing of political campaigns. Of course that was when they were the ones rolling in money.

Yes, I know, McCain has been an advocate, of sorts, and a sponsor, of sorts, of campaign finance reform, but when Obama states, as he does in the video message in which he announced his decision, that the entire system, including the so-called reforms of it, by which we finance our elections is “broken,” he’s right.

Here is as much of what Obama says on the video that I could get off the story as it appears in the NYTimes and Reuters:  Read more 

If it sounds like I’m assigning you homework, it’s because I am.

Not only can you get extra-credit points*, you just might feel a little better about your ultimate decision re: Election ’08.

Here’s the assignment: Please list out issues that matter to you, and what you think will happen under Obama vs. what you think will happen under McCain.

For example:

EDUCATION

Obama: No Child Left Behind is renamed, slightly liberalized, and slightly better funded. After a photo-op with the National Education Association, little focus is paid to education reform for the remaining four years.

McCain: A chunk of the unfunded mandate is targeted toward parochial schools. After a photo-op with representatives of the cutest little Baptist school you ever saw, little focus is paid to education reform for the remaining four years.

Links to sources that back up your projections will, y’know, bolster your case. Unlike my crappy example, which is mere unsupported speculation.  Read more 

Later today.

I wonder if it will be as enthusiastic as mine….

Quite the paranoid holdout he is, waiting until even I hauled in.

This might be a good time to crank up the volume on this.

A request for the case against McCain.

So far, I’m seeing some substantive suggestions and also fresh examples of why it’s hard to love some hardcore Obamaites.

The reason for my inquiry? I’m burned out from watching Obama’s shitty campaign, and I’m simply too disaffected and too exhausted to be the rah-rah Beat McCain guy.

But McCain sux, too, and as we make our respective decisions, it behooves us to remind ourselves of who will be elected if we abstain, make a third-party statement, or even vote for the mythical moderate maverick.  Read more 

because you did ask …

2007 commemoration of Bloody Sunday at Brown Chapel AME Church, in Selma, Alabama

update: i deleted the photo from this post

This November, I plan to vote for Barack Obama.

What do I plan to do between now and then?

Tell the truth, like I always have.

Some say that the opinions of us dead-ender Obama skeptics are a mere symptom of depression over losing. This is condescending and willfully ignorant.  Read more 

After the health care meeting, I came upon a group of three middle-aged women. One was holding some Obama literature and saying, “Actually, I’m having a lot of trouble getting over this.” I stopped and listened and joined in. All were Hillarians, still quite sore from the primary fight. I said something about the “orgy of hate.” One of them said yes, and it wasn’t just from the Obama people. She described how the Jim Lehrer show came to the local public TV station to do a piece on the primary. And (1) everyone in the discussion was male, and (2) every time the Hillary guy (a local county official) started to talk, the others interrupted him and talked over him and generally kept him from making his point. Six weeks later, she’s still furious.