I just went over to ActBlue and gave them the money I was going to contribute to Barack Obama. ...Damn. Am I going to have to vote for Nader again?!!

Pelosi, Hoyer, Carney and Emmanual have all just joined the list of traitors who will never be president: Gebhardt, Daschele, Lieberman, Kerry, Edwards, Clinton... It was the German Center Party that voted to give Hitler the Enabling Law of 1938. We have Democrats to give us the war authorization in 2002, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and now this.

I raised my kids on stories of Watergate, the Senate Judiciary hearings, with Sam Irvin, and the House hearings with Barbara Jordan. This will be their first year to vote. I am so sad.

I'm afraid Glenn's right about Obama. I don't see a whole lot of difference here.

Pelosi: But I'm pleased that in Title I, there is enhancement over the existing FISA law. Reaffirmation, I guess that's the word I'd looking for. A reaffirmation that FISA and Title III of the Criminal Code are the authorities under which Americans can be collected upon. It makes an improvement over current law and the Senate bill in terms of how you can collect on Americans overseas.

Obama: After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year's Protect America Act.

Pelosi: It's an improvement over the Senate bill in terms of – the Senate wanted to say, “Okay, we will agree to exclusivity,” which is, in my view, the biggest issue in the bill, that the law is the exclusive authority and not the whim of the President of the United States. They said, “We will agree to exclusivity, but only a narrow collection of things will fall that that category. Under the rest, the President has inherent authority under the Constitution.” That's out. That's out, thank heavens.

Obama: Under this compromise legislation, an important tool in the fight against terrorism will continue, but the President's illegal program of warrantless surveillance will be over. It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people.

Pelosi: And it is again in Title II, an improvement over the Senate bill in that it empowers the District Court, not the FISA Court, to look into issues that relate to immunity. It has a strong language in terms of an Inspector General to investigate how the law has been used, is being used, will be used.

Obama: It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future. It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses. But this compromise guarantees a thorough review by the Inspectors General of our national security agencies to determine what took place in the past, and ensures that there will be accountability going forward.

Pelosi: So that will be legislation that we take up tomorrow. We will have a lively debate I'm sure within our caucus on this subject and in the Congress. It has bipartisan support.... As much as I admire Mr. Murtha, I'm not as enthusiastic about the war part of the bill and will not be supporting it.

Obama: So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives – and the liberty – of the American people.

Just for the record, since the Congress has acted so nobly to protect my family and I from the heinous deeds of a future terrorist by approving the FISA capitulation today,

In the event a terrorist attach wipes out DC and I don't survive living east of DC in Prince Georges County,

I would still have preferred that our civil rights had been preserved and that the Constitution hadn't been trashed in the name of national security.

I guess I'm enough of a Nihilist to believe that by only allowing McCain to really fuck things up and his successor and their successor will we be rid of this infestation, this fetid disease, this cancer called 'conservatism'.

If the candidate that is supposed to support US (We the people) and he/she doesn't, then I guess I really don't have a problem with the other guy winning.

When you think about it, would you rather have someone that you know you can't trust in office or someone who you do trust and time and again fails you on the big items.

Obama backs 'cap and trade'. Obama backs 'clean coal'. Obama backs endless presidential snooping in our lives.

On the 'big issues', how much difference is there? I'm no troll. I'm just wiser to the game.

Jennifer Granholm stood in front of me and about a hundred activists and swore on the sacred ground that she supported the environment and would do all in her power to protect it.

I guess her idea of protecting the environment is more coal plants and less environmental laws.

I'm wiser. I'm saying 'bring it on'! The republicans only destroy themselves with their extremism. Obama takes a piece of my heart with every betrayal. I'd rather not have hope and watch them flame out than be trampled by my own team.

There is an endless supply of white men. There has always been a limited number of human beings. -- Old Lodge Skins

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I don't scorn, deride, or begrudge anyone's determination to resist defeatism, although I probably won't get any points for being objectively pro-defeatist.

But I just gotta say that I find it sad and depressing that we beleaguered and embattled minority of human beings-- if I may so flatter myself-- are so deeply traumatized, exhausted, and parched after seven lean years wandering in the desert created by a predatory criminal Executive Branch and a political elite that has transmogrified into a principle-free, ethics-free, para-corporate class of middle-managers that many of us desperately credit "Nowhere Man" Obama's disingenuous and equivocal position on this abominable legislation.

I've been keenly aware from the beginning that Obama is absolutely a messianic politician, and that support for Obama is contingent on making the requisite leap of faith, hope, and trust in the candidate. It doesn't have to be an enormous flying leap, although Obama certainly has a "hard core" of devoted zealots who indeed see him as quasi-supernatural-- oddly, even SF Chronicle writer Mark Morford seems to be espousing the view that Obama is, or at least shows indications of being, a transcendent, charismatic adept or spiritual master. Just as saints have various manifestations or avatars, some tout Obama as The Second Coming of Abraham Lincoln. I wish!

But the above-cited leap can be less dramatic, even merely a micro-leap. And certainly supporters have many mundane, secular reasons to find Obama a superior and worthy candidate. So I can understand and sympathize with those who are sticking with him despite this little letdown, and are thus seeing the crisis as opportunity-- just like that bogus motivational invention about the Chinese having a single ideogram that means both "crisis" and "opportunity".

But Obama's belated position boils down to "Trust me! I'll fix it!" Why is this sidewinding appeal, straight from the Confidence Man 101 syllabus, any more credible here than it is when uttered by the forked tongues of "lesser" politicians?

I submit that we have become so desperate that we are reduced to "hysterically trusting" Obama, for lack of a better term. I don't give a flying fuck about the high-wire he must tread so delicately; if a fucking supposed professor of Constitutional Law can give lip service to this counter-Constitutional, anti-Constitutional, post-Constitutional abomination, then throw out a couple of bones about fixing the really egregious excesses by and by-- in the fullness of time, as it were-- his messianic cred drops into the negative for Your Humble Narrator.

The jokes that Woody Allen used in "Annie Hall" are truly monumentally and profoundly expressive of the paradoxes of contemporary life. You may recall this one, extemporaneously paraphrased:

A man mentions to his psychiatrist that the man's brother thinks he's a chicken.

The psychiatrist suggests that the man bring his brother in for treatment.

The man replies: "Well, I would... but we need the eggs."

The best I can say about Obama today is: he's a good egg.