But my point, despite being filled with what you call “talking points”, was that all you guys seem to have is fear and loathing. Have you ever noticed when you talk to McCain voters, they keep saying, “What scares me the most about Obama is…”? They never say, “I’m voting FOR McCain because…”
I’d much rather take a chance on Obama than McCain. Palin scares the pure shit out of me. A Rapture Nut of even less intellect than the current crowd as President? No thanks.

The phone tapping you described was on international calls with people with known terrorist ties on one end.

You believe our men and women in uniform have known terrorist ties? You are a very sad and hate-filled person.

1) Our “effective participation in the Geneva Convention” has been meaningless for about 60 years. It’s been that long since we faced an enemy that respected it. Further, it was intended to be a “tit for tat” intention — if you want the protection of it, you should abide by it yourself. We aren’t facing an enemy that recognizes or respects it.

2) The “suspensions” you describe — habeas corpus, the 4th Amendment, and whatnot — have all been very measured, very limited, and grossly exaggerated. The phone tapping you described was on international calls with people with known terrorist ties on one end. The habeas corpus was being argued for non-Americans not on American soil.

Hell, if it was half as bad as you say it is, why is Media Matters still in business? Why isn’t Keith Olbermann sharing a pen with Joseph Wilson in Guantanamo? Why is Bush getting ready to leave office without a fuss?

But if you wanna talk about amendments, how about Obama and the 2nd? He’s long been a champion of an absolute ban on handguns, AND he supported the Supreme Court saying that was unconstitutional! This is a Constitutional scholar who cheerfully champions a position he agrees is against the Constitution. That, up there with the selection of Joe Biden, screams that the guy has NO judgment whatsoever.

J.

Obama was a State Senator at that time — a representative, in other words. His job was to represent the wishes and interests of his constituents. When he voted “present,” he deprived them of their voice on that piece of legislation.

There are valid times when “present” is a valid response. The most common reason is when the representative has a personal interest in the matter before them. For example, when Dianne Feinstein is called upon to vote on earmarks that will funnel billions into companies her husband controls. (Oh, my bad. She voted for those earmarks. She should have abstained from those votes.)

Another reason I’d consider voting “present” would be on the endless stream of stupid, pointless measures legislatures seem to generate. “National Sea Monkey Awareness Day” proclamations. Vague declarations of sympathy and support that mean nothing. I’d vote “present” on those just to show my contempt for those wasts of time and effort and paper.

Obama, by refusing to cast a vote, essentially defrauded his constituents. He took the office, took the paycheck, and didn’t do the job he was hired for.

You take Obama’s leaving the “community organizer” role as a sign of wisdom, of seeking to increase his ability to make change. That’s one interpretation. Another is that he realized that he didn’t need to actually affect change to progress. Rather, he just needed to burnish his credentials a bit to hop on the “social engineers/community organizers” bandwagon to put him on the path to power.

I find that a more compelling interpretation because it’s more consistent with his conduct ever since. Not once has he ever used his rising power and influence to actually affect real change.

As noted, he voted “present” on over a hundred controversial measures.

He never — NOT ONCE — stood up to the astonishing corruption of the Chicago Democratic machine that was boosting him to power.

He railed against immunity for the telecomms, then voted voted in favor of it.

He strongly supported the DC gun ban, but once it was declared unconstitional, backed the Supreme Court decision — at the same time.

He denounced the “surge” strategy that has given Iraq the best chance it has ever had to become a free, democratic state, voted against it, and while acknowledging its success, STILL says he’d vote against it.

He chose JOE BIDEN as his running mate. Biden, who has been wrong on more foreign policy issues than almost anyone else I can think of. Biden, who generates more gaffes than Dan Quayle. Biden, who whenever he is challenged on anything responds with complete and utter bullshit — but is a good enough pol that it sounds good at the time. Biden, who has steered millions in earmarks to the clients of his lobbyist son. Biden, who has spent over half his life in the Senate, is supposed to help Obama bring about “change.”

Not once in his career has Obama taken a single risk, made a major stand on principle. Rather, he has embodied the “go along to get along” principle and followed the direction of his party superiors, who have rewarded him for his loyalty.

I fear that a vote for Obama is a vote for letting Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi run the country, and that should terrify anyone.

And I fear that because it it entirely consistent with Obama’s entire political career. You can feel free to Hope that once he’s elected, he’ll Change; I would rather not bet on that.

J.

You quite miss Jay Tea’s point. He said, ‘Obama proclaimed himself “my brother’s keeper,” yet we see how he treats his brother and other relatives when they need help.’

You see, it’s the conservative authoritarian’s role to decide who needs help; it’s not for those silly little people to determine for themselves what they need. Cf. invasion of Iraq, in which we would be greeted as liberators because OF COURSE the little Iraqis would be absolutely delighted to see us.

Jay Tea, you are wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Your rant is nothing but an screed of talking points of outrage of mindless Republican talking points written by a man who has so pathetically allowed his sense of Republicans entitlement blind him to the fact that Obama is one of our finest presidential candidates. Your screed is nothing but the last bleatings of a Republican entitlement machine desperate to bring down a politician who is better than they are. And they are rooted in your gullibility and willingness to lie in favor of your party’s cause, and that is your biggest moral mistake of all which makes you much worse than what you could ever criticize Obama for. You’ve decided to morally compromise yourself.

Let’s focus on who Obama is. Obama’s a guy who did head to Chicago as a community organizer to help out people who were facing a tough time in the 80s. And, yeah, you know, life is tough: improvement comes in bare increments, leading Obama to decide that getting a law degree would put him in a better position to do good. It’s what you’d expect a good person to do who wanted to contribute to society. The bevy of other Republican jokers? You don’t see them doing this sort of thing in their lives, because they’re moral losers. That’s why people like Barack Obama get picked for things like the Annenberg challenge, which, though it could only give us small improvements in achievement, are important: because these are the people who focus on improving things and giving people better opportunities.

Next you criticize Obama for what– voting present on stupid “gotcha” bills? Aren’t you Republican ogod-government types telling us how bills are loaded down with useless amendments and passed to serve the politicial machinations of their sponsors? Well, screw that. Obama didn’t play the game you wanted him to play. In all, he passed some good legislation in Chicago– stuff he came up with and conceived of himself: McCain, of course, isn’t interested in legislation. As a moral failure of a human being, McCain basically likes to step in and take credit for things he doesn’t understand. Obama even wrote legislation together with the loathsome Sen. Coburn. And he dealt with substantial state opposition in Illinois to improve law enforcement problems with interrogations. These are things McCain likes to talk about (being tough on crime or caring about earmarks), but never does anything about, because he’s a phony.

Now, of course, you can flip off on a rant about Obama’s relatives to sort of portray him as a bad guy or criticize him out of jealously for the sin of being popular and having lots of people willing to give him money, while Republicans are apathetic and dispirited about their own candidates, but it doesn’t matter: at the end, you’re lashing out in rage at a candidate who doesn’t deserve it and is in fact that sort of candidate you’d be praising if he were a Republicans. If you’re going to punish a candidate for doing good and being good, then it’s obvious that the problem is yours and the moral failure is yours.

Obama is, by all accounts, productive, well-informed, knowledgeable, and smart who navigated some dangerous waters to get some good work done. Yes, the “I love fundies’ votes but hate church” secular wing of the Republican party will try to drum up outrage about Obama who went to a church that actually worked on the ground to help their communities, unlike the lazy losers who make up the Republican critics, try to play “oh, but someone he once met, somewhere, did something decades ago kevin bacon game, but it doesn’t actually work, because these are pathetic bleatings that no one but a group of resentful ignoramuses takes seriously.

The moral failure of the Republican ideology is complete. They hate the voters: Obama went to the voters directly and got them to vote for him. Obama lived a good life wanting to do good things: recent prominent Republicans have led narcissistic, indulgent lives dedicated to self-glorification while watching the world around them crumble. Bush, McCain, and the mainstream of the Republican party of moral, intellectual, and ideological failures. That you support them, that you pathetically bleat about how the Annenberg challenge wasn’t all it’s cracked up to be while you remain pathetically silent (and even supportive) of outrageous evils of torture supported and perpetrated by Republicans only demonstrates the the biggest failure is your own. You are absolutely blind and incapable of acknowledging that, in this election, Obama is the superior candidate. Your anger rises from your resentment that he has the ability and the audacity to beat the republicans. Your empty bleatings would sound the same against Clinton, or anyone else. They are simply untrustworthy, and your character judgments are not to be trusted.

But she was a BAD governor.

Yes, weirdly, New Hampshire became a more attractive, more economically vibrant place to live during that time. Not such good judgment you have there.

Once again, you have bleatings about relatively good politicians, but you are silent on the matter of absolute dangerous, immoral joker like McCain, Bush, and Cheney who are, by any decent metric, absolutely horrible, horrible people with a bad track record. Yet these are the ones you support. Says more about you than about Obama. And that’s why Obama is winning– that what voters are looking for when Obama talks about “change” and the need to get beyond “partisan rancor”: voters are tired of hearing this crap from people like you.

Oh, isn’t there one? Then WTF are you talking about?

But back to the point of the original article: Obama proclaimed himself “my brother’s keeper,” yet we see how he treats his brother and other relatives when they need help. When you combine that with his non-record of achievements, how the hell is this guy doing so well? Is he the ultimate expression of the Peter Principle?

J.

Not for long! Come January of next year, Jeanne Shaheen is going to be “your lady”.

Who’s “using” the kid himself? He didn’t do anything, Sarah Palin’s the one who gave him the name. If he wants to name her kids as if they were cats, that’s fine, but she shouldn’t expect not to be called out on it.

Too funny. I went to an Episcopalian school nursery-5th grade, and grew up in East Texas surrounded by Baptists. My younger sister’s best friend was a Catholic and forced to break up with her little middle school boyfriend because the boy’s father didn’t want his son with a Papist. I accidentally sat through the beginning of a “Christians in Action” meeting once because there were so many of the same students who were in National Honor Society with me. Speaking of National Honor Society, we had our induction in a church and it didn’t occur to anyone — including me — to see this as a problem. I was an abortion prohibitionist (no exceptions for rape or incest) in high school, despite an early pro-choice phase induced by reading Ayn Rand, because one of my classmates had me convinced that an embryo was the same as a newborn. I was in an evangelical Bible study group my third year of college because I wanted to learn more, but dropped out when I realized that my incessant questioning, while patiently accepted by the group leader, was interfering with what the Christians in the group wanted to get out of it.

Who do you think are the people I was talking about who took pains to get married BEFORE they had a kid? And sorry, what was the “stereotyping” in which I was engaging by wondering why Bristol Palin is not getting married before she gives birth?

Jay Tea, I don’t wonder at Palin’s failure to marry before childbirth because I don’t know anything about Christian fundamentalists. I wonder at it because it diverges from the fundamentalists I knew. If they’re different in Alaska than they are in TX, that’s fine, I just didn’t know about a geographic variation in mores about the importance of a baby’s having married parents.

Actually, yes, Jay. You clearly implied that if a bill is not controversial, and passes unanimously by voice vote, then that automatically means that it won’t/can’t have an “affect on the world”. There is no logic or reason to that kind of idiotic thinking.

I’ll make it simpler: apart from the nuclear nonproliferation law, what has Barack Obama done?

For example, you can cite his letter warning about the pending collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I’ll see that and raise you actual attempts by Republicans to pass laws (you know, what real Senators do when they’re worried about something) to do something. Three of those Republicans would be John McCain, Elizabeth Dole, and John Sunumu (my guy).

mambo, Obama came out against the war at an anti-war rally. The war in Iraq was NEVER “hugely popular;” it was pretty UNpopular among most of Obama’s core constituencies from day one. And he picked as his running mate a guy who voted FOR the war, and now explains his vote as “I thought Bush was bluffing! I voted to THREATEN war, not actually WAGE IT!!!!” (This is known as “The Hillary Defense.”)

Obama himself described himself as a “blank screen,” a sort of Rorshach blot that others could see whatever they wanted to see in him. And a lot of people, it seems, are ready to do just that with their ballot.

Include me out.

J.

So something can only have an “effect on the world” if it’s “controversial”? What a ridiculous and bizarre worldview you have, Jay.

By all appearances, you’re too late.

“Finally, Obama has achieved exactly NOTHING in his life of meaning.”

This kind of idiotic, hyperbolic statement makes me want to forcibly remove your brain and replace it with a baked potato.