I ordered mine.

What I posted in comments at Jesus’ General:

Wow, JC, wow! A general, a Christian, and a class act!

Please consider yourself more-than-exempted from any gallows schadenfreude posts I might write.

How many times did someone have the courtesy to say something like that to us DFH Cassandras about the Iraq War, GWB, etc.?

Not very often. So, I truly appreciate this post.

Thank you.

Said in response to:

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

apologies…

…to Lambert, Vast Left, and NBFH.

Clinton votes on FISA:

Cloture: NO

Passage: NO

You told me so.

Posted by Gen. JC Christian, Patriot at 2:37 PM

Labels: eating crow

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…..

The honeymoon is over:

And [rightwingers] also accused the media of being in the tank for Obama, which is a standard “liberal media” charge, but which, at least in some cases, was an observable fact (although I think it had less to do with Obama and more with Clinton) and which now makes them all uncomfortable and susceptible to overreaction the other way. There is a reason why the Republicans laid so low during that period.  Read more 

Salon:

Can’t Darwin and God get along?

Of course they can, argues physicist and theologian Karl Giberson, if only many believers were more sophisticated and atheists less dogmatic.

Epic fail right from the start.

Atheism is the absence of a silly something, a resistance to prevailing dogma.

It’s cute and all (tiresome, too) to pretend that atheists have a specific dogma. In fact, atheists often disagree about what the proper definition of atheism is. But there ain’t no dogma.

No doubt my refusal to accept this bullshit premise will be considered sign of being dogmatic.  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 

I see in the daily HuffPo e-mail news blast that Obama has a post there called “My Position On FISA.”

But I’m afraid to click it. Sounds NSFW.

There are some positions that even the Kama Sutra’s editors would find too degradingly submissive to print….

I think Lambert’s wrong about Obama needing more donations. I think what he needs is a “safe word.” Because sometimes “just words” really do matter.

Hitchens came for the war against Islamofascism, and stayed for the waterboarding.

Turns out he didn’t like the latter so much. If he doesn’t mind, this is one perspective that I’m happy to take on faith.

(via)

Unwittingly or not, and immoral or immoral, the U.S. used “enhanced techniques” learned from a 1957 chart called “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War.”

What could possibly go wrong?

(via)

[Welcome, Media Matters readers!]

vastleft*:

Many people believe the press failed to do its job in the run up to the Iraq war. Has Beltway reporting changed as a result?

Gwen Ifill:

I am not sure what you mean by “Beltway reporting.”

Do you mean the New York Times reporting that exposed the Justice Department’s wireless wiretapping?  Read more 

Daniel Larison:

[Democrats] see a tremendous opportunity in an overwhelmingly pro-Democratic year to win an election that also could provide something like a mandate for a progressive agenda, and in the interests of winning they have swallowed their objections to Obama’s relatively less progressive platform (as compared to Edwards or Clinton) only to be betrayed on an issue as fundamental and central as constitutional liberties and derided in the process as part of the problem with our political system. “Be practical,” someone says, “we’re trying to win an election.” To which they might reasonably reply, ”To what end, if our candidate caves in on major issues?”  Read more 

When Obama was the beneficiary and Hillary was being pounced on by rabid wolves, where were Progressive Blogosphere 1.0’s muckrakers then?

Well, here’s the corporate media that treated y’all so well in the primaries…


Of course, Obama both rejects and defends Clark’s comments, so either way he’s doing the right thing.

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 

Stephen Ducat at HuffPo:

Obama’s resort to the triangulation of the old politics is an admission of a much more serious limitation. It tells us that he does not believe in his own ability to reframe certain key issues in a way that makes a progressive stance the one that is obviously the most moral. It shows that he does not feel up to the task of rendering some liberal principles intellectually clear and emotionally compelling.  Read more 

If this came from anyone but Digby, I’d do this as one of those snarky “shorter” items.

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t she saying that because Obama is black, the only improvement we can reasonably expect from him over other liberal-phobic Democrats is that he’s black?

And the same goes double for Hillary, because she’s not only a chick but a Clinton, so we’d have gotten even less out of her. The benefit with her would be the first woman president minus a CDS penalty.  Read more 

See Glenn re: the myths (sorry, BIO) about the supposed needs and benefits of moving to the so-called center (i.e., adopting or accommodating the radical right’s platforms).

I do disagree with him on two points:

1. IMHO, Samantha Power’s famous security memo isn’t quite an ideal tonic for the Bush Doctrine, given that it carelessly overplays the Iranian threat. I’m wary of that when Robert Gates does it, and I’m just as wary when it comes from a Democrat. The possibility that Obama will stay the course with Gates is all the more reason for such slips (or whatever they are) to give us pause.

2. I don’t think there were ever grounds to be excited about Obama as a progressive change agent. He has consistently worked the Forer Effect, talking in circles, saying something for everyone without regard (or much scrutiny) for the internal contradictions.  Read more 

Greg Sargent:

Tea leaf readers note that Hillary’s New York colleague, Chuck Schumer, also announced today that he’s voting against it. Will Hillary follow suit? It seems like a huge opening for her to repair relations with progressives angry with her over her treatment of Obama during primary. On the other hand, some Dems note a complicating factor: If Hillary votes against the bill, it could cast a bit of a shadow over the planned “unity” Hillary-Obama event on Friday.

I’ll give Greg points for noticing the Sophie’s Choice that Hillary is facing.

But “repair relations with progressives angry with her over her treatment of Obama during primary”!? That’s like expecting a battered wife to apologize for wearing out her husband’s fist.

Los Angeles Times: “Obama is shifting toward the center.”

“I’ve been struck by the speed and decisiveness of his move to the center,” said Will Marshall, president of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute.

“Centrist Progressive Policy Institute”! So much for naming things what they are.

Just like today’s centrist was yesterday’s rabid hawk.

I guess a Liberal supports nine or ten Amendments of the Bill of Rights, a Conservative supports one, and a Centrist supports five.

Second Amendment, check! I wonder what the other four are that Obama supports….  Read more 

My original letter is here.

Glenn’s response, followed by mine to him:

Thanks for sending me that email letting me know of your post. The email you sent it to is one I really don’t use any more and only check very sporadically, so I am only seeing it now.

I registered for an account at Corrente a few days ago in order to post a comment correcting a false claim that was made about me there, but my account hasn’t been approved, so I haven’t been able to comment.  Read more 

OK, so it’s not Mt. Rushmore…

San Francisco is to hold a vote on whether to rename one of its largest sewage treatment facilities after George W. Bush, in what supporters describe as “a fitting monument to the President’s work”.

More than 8,500 signatures have already been gathered in support of the plan — 1,300 more than the minimum required to get the proposal on the November ballot. The scheme was devised by an official-sounding group called the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco.  Read more 

(via)

So much for suffrage:

Serena Williams would vote for Barack Obama if she could. Don’t even ask Venus Williams what her political leanings are.

The Williams sisters, vocal on so many issues from fashion to gender equality and equal pay for women, say they’re not allowed to vote because of their religion. The sisters, who have 14 Grand Slam singles titles between them and are among the most recognizable athletes in sports, are Jehovah’s Witnesses.

At Jesus’ place, Austin Cline seems to doubt that PUMAs have legitimate concerns or grievances about Obama.

To what extent are former Hillary supporters who threaten to vote for John McCain… standing on principle?

…  Read more 

OMFG:

The Democratic Congress is more popular with Republicans than with Democrats. I really wonder if this is the first time in modern American history when a Congress is more popular among the opposition party than among the party that putatively controls it. And this was taken before the FISA vote, so Hoyer’s Congress is certain to become even more popular among the GOP.