Send contribution to ActBlue. Check

Send fax to Pelosi:

Steny Hoyer's "compromise" on telecom immunity is a joke. And you all know it. Nice precedent.

Let's see...if the "government" orders Blackwater to shoot my children down in the streets, they can do it with impunity and immunity. I guess that's only fair, since they're already doing it in Iraq.

Habeas: canceled. Rule of Law: canceled. Separation of Powers: canceled. Unreasonable search and Seizure: canceled.

If you get to work on restoring the Divine Right of Kings, Dick Cheney will die happy.

Please pull this bill.

Send fax to Obama:

I can't support your campaign if I have to spend all my $$ fighting Democratic initiatives by Steny Hoyer.

My fax to Speaker Pelosi follows.

We need to hear from you. You are the leader of your party.

Please lead.

Send fax to Hoyer: Sorry, just can't do it.

Can't join the teeth grinding and garment rending. Nothing is really happening that wasn't totally expected. I'm actually pleasantly surprised that Obama showed up at all.

Michelle's dogwhistle comments to the far left notwithstanding, Obama is voting like a centrist because he is a centrist. He's acting like a politician because he is a poilitician. The emerging question is only whether he is a bald-faced panderer.

My only real disappointment was Webb's vote.

I learned more about Obama from his allowing his children to be interviewed for TV than from this vote. What I learned is that he's susceptible to all the bright lights, flattering sycophancy, and insider clubbiness of THE BIG SHOW. If he doesn't hold the privacy and integrity of his children sacred, then there's probably no part of himself or his values that he holds sacred.

"No man can, for any considerable time, show one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally becoming confused as to which is the true." - Hawthorne

Two choices: drink the kewl-aid, or fight from the outside.

I saw Ralph Nader on TV Sunday night. He made a whole lot of sense on a lot of issues. Total outsider, totally uncool. That's cool. But outsiders who try to play the inside game are just spoilers. We need a pedagogy and a vocabulary of permanent opposition.

Obama gets my vote, sure. My time and my money go to more focused efforts.

FISA LEGACY:

BUSH BURIES SEPARATION OF POWERS; DEMS BURY 4TH; CHENEY BURIES CHURCH

The KOS tagline 'more and better' Democrats needs to be changed to 'better.'

Beating Republicans only reinforces the status quo if there is no consequence for DEMS supporting corporatist, neo-con, neo-fascism.

Think about Kent State. They only had to murder five students in cold blood to cool the whole anti-war movement. Mexico was a little more brutal and obvious, but Tlatelolco put the government back in control.

No, I'm not advocating murder. Please. Just take them out (of Congress).

(Digression: I am waiting to see what forty years of advances in crowd control technology (hard and soft) will visit on citizens if any large number wakes up and takes to the streets in divers locations.)

Until the progressive left can visit ruin on identified DEMOCRATIC enablers of the Village Centrists, look for real change in your pocket. In the meantime maybe Obama can tone down the bellicose rhetoric, move the quagmire from Iraq to Afghanistan, and give us a watered-down health care reform that preserves corporate piracy of the health-care system.

Primary challenges. Pick your battles. Win them.

If Roubini says the choices are 'excellent' then I can't disagree. Who'd you expect.....? Krugman?

The main point is that we shouldn't accept these nominations uncritically, and that the records of the nominees should be scrutinized.

But we all know that's not going to happen. The media will fall in line because it's not their job to judge, analyze, or challenge. It's their job to cheerlead...or condemn. It's a lot easier than reporting. Key word: Clueless.

It's a confidence game. A sting. Obama is far from immune, by inclination and philosophy and commitment he's a player. No one as explosively upwardly mobile as he could have made it to the top without many explicit and implicit assurances to that effect. Read his books.

But that's not the end of the story, Ralph. There are distinctions to be made between the extremes, and the chances of getting some economic policies for the masses, a watered-down health care reform, a less bellicose foreign policy, a reduction in outright torture, closing of Gitmo, and a reality-based environmental program are worth compromising for.

So suck it up. We're going to be doing a lot of compromising.