Explicitly, Obama is a junior senator, and your expectations of him are silly.

Referring this to a British-derived concept of 'monarchic' rule is misleading, I think. Me being British, I immediately noticed, when I started reading the serious American press, that Calvinism had had a much more profound effect on the USA than it had on Britain. The Calvinist axioms include the notion that an absolute morality should be revealed to each virtuous individual by an interior revelation. Thus, morality is non-negotiable, every individual being expected to proceed by the interior light of his own revealed moral sense. This makes impossible demands on the law, so the law too ends up being treated as a revealed text. This requires that the whole system of legal philosophy also bases itself on an imagined non-negotiable revelation derived from 'Judeo-Christian values.' Everything else is regarded as debauched, and I think this is why 'liberals' (not to mention Leftists in the proper, radically sceptical, sense) are regarded as, at best, a sort of demi-monde. My impression is that our monarchy, at the time of your revolution, while famously oppressive and barbaric in its colonial policy, was forced to deal with our own bourgeoisie on the basis of a quite cynical, Lockean moral philosophy, not at all 'the divine right of kings.'

Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July

And I just hit town and my throat was dry,

I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew.

At an old saloon on a street of mud,

There at a table, dealing stud,

Sat the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Sue."

Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad

From a worn-out picture that my mother'd had,

And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye.

He was big and bent and gray and old,

And I looked at him and my blood ran cold

And I said: "My name is 'Sue!' How do you do!

Now your gonna die!!"

-Johnny Cash

that one thing the Constitution needs to survive is that all 3 branches not conspire to destroy it.

Or allow themselves to be neutralized.

Or that the citizens allow same.

I have to admit I didn't really follow that. But I'd like to hear more.

the American experiment will be dead as King John McCain begins His Most Sovereign Imperial Reign

so, little Johnny and little Georgie both want to be king!?

this means that both of them need to go to Britain and become members of the British Royal Family and then start a War of Succession with the current folks on the throne

[Arne]: Seems to be de riguer [sic] nowadays for conservatives (or RWers at least) to redefine themselves as "liberals in the original meaning of the word"

[Susan]: Err..no it doesn't. That's your RW bogeyman alarm going off unchecked again

I've noted it. And you will too eventually, we hope, even if you're a bit slower on the uptake. It may take the trouncing you Rethugs get in 2008 before you all start "reinventing yourselves" in earnest. The alternative approach is to deny that today's discredited conservatives were really "true conservatives"; that approach is also showing its head, and will be taken by the more severely afflicted wingnuts and little Freep goofballs.....

[Arne]: ... and let us decide where on the political spectrum you stand.

[Susan]: Absolutely. Despite all the protestations to the contrary, it's obvious that most people here who take Glenn's side are absolutely batshit tree-fucking mad, and you can call me Susan if isn't so.

As they say, Susan, opinions are like a$$ho....

Cheers,

I accept your point. Many people will be dancing in the streets if Obama is anointed King in Gondor, and I won't be one of them. I'll be watching for signs---watching him, and watching others, because the game won't be over.

Yet there must be some middle ground. First, I don't think not voting accomplishes anything at all. Second, if large chunks of the population choose not to vote, I'd expect that to be a symptom of a drop-out ("neutralized") attitude, not a commitment to more revolutionary revolution. So I'd ask, are we talking about not voting as an individual moral choice, or as a broad strategy?

Also, according to what I gather of your theory, what we need most is to be left with no options---perhaps for Obama to be assassinated, or McCain to win, or for the economy to truly and utterly collapse, or for the Worm to rule for 5000 years. Yes, those things will piss people off more and maybe to the point of serious action. I've said much the same thing right here.

But why can't we hope or work for these things or for some other truly revolutionary positive change AND vote for Obama or an acceptable write-in candidate, if he/she is the least of all available evils in the voting booth?

Despite all the protestations to the contrary, it's obvious that most people here who take Glenn's side are absolutely batshit tree-fucking mad, and you can call me Susan if isn't so.

Very well, Susan. It isn't so, and you'd have to be absolutely bat-shite tree-humping looney to think otherwise.

But then, that's the problem with our reality-based community: we can't really relate to the fantasy-based lives your lot exist in. No common frames of reference, you see. Might as well try to tutor an tick in nuclear physics.

LWM is rolled up in a blanket pretending he's a pancake already? A blintz.

Off-Topic. Prunes. I bought a bottle of %100 Sunsweet brand Prune Juice.

I hope none get rolled by a police state. We'd get as flat and pretty as a blintz.

If McCain becomes a commander-in-chief cook, we best get a new credit card.

I ain't sure. Stay here to oppose tyranny is the best. Visit Nova Scotia for chowder.

If this is factual, McCain as hero and patriot and maverick, etc., as an enormous fraud.

-“McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated. By McCain’s own account, after three or four days he cracked. He promised his Vietnamese captors, “I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital ...

“His Vietnamese captors soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III, came from a well-bred line in the American military elite. . .The Vietnamese realized, this poor stooge has propaganda value. The admiral’s boy was used to special treatment, and his captors knew that. They were working him.”

“. . .two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him. It was not ‘name rank and serial number, or kill me’. as specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based, the number of U.S. pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue ships.”

“…McCain was held for five and half years. The first two weeks’ behavior might have been pragmatism, but McCain soon became North Vietnam’s go-to collaborator…..McCain cooperated with the North Vietnamese for a period of three years. His situation isn’t as innocuous as that of the French barber who cuts the hair of the German occupier. McCain was repaying his captors for their kindness and mercy.-

http://tiny.cc/tYodr