I wasn't old enough to vote for JFK, but I was old enough to follow the 1960 campaign and old enough to see how his subsequent decisions and the decisions of the Presidents that followed him affected my life and the lives of my generation. It wasn't altogether pretty.

If you really think the actions and direction of the United States under George W. Bush were no big deal or that the Presidency of Al Gore wouldn't have been significantly different, then I guess I'll have to say OK, but I also have to wonder how the brains of the twenty percent of the population that feels this way might be wired and what they've been smoking.

There aren't any guarantees: we make a gamble every time we change the leadership and it's important to remember you have to keep your eye on every one of them. "Power corrupts, absolute power etc. etc." It's the power by itself that corrupts, it affects every individual that has it.

Obama? Who knows, who really knows about anyone? He sounds like he has the smarts and skill to get himself elected President, a Harvard educated black American: that's no small achievement.

So I will vote for the man because I think another four or eight years on the course we've been following with a Republican administration will be ruinous, but I'll also be watching.

Every time I point out that you are lying about what you are writing that I said, you run away to some other blog to show off your extreme derangement and then come back here and repeat your lies the next day as if it never happened.

race boating the Clintons...

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/01/27/clinton/index.html

wetting your pants over Obama's "greatest speech on race relations evah!"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/18/obama/index.html

(here's my favorite quote..but the whole thing is just one huge Obamessiahnistic atrocity) "There were numerous manipulative tactics which the average cynical political strategist would have urged him to employ, and none of those were found in his speech."

as for your supposed defense of CLinton... back in March, in one of your first attacks on the media for daring to ask Obama about his background, you had to reach all the way back to two pieces you wrote in early January. You never decried the lies being spread by Team Obama and its supporters about "fairy tale", and the whole "MLK/LBJ" thing -- and as noted above, became an active participant in the race-boating of the Clintons when Bill Clinton made a rather obvious and truthful observation about why Obama would win in SC.

More to the point, while you love to criticize the media, you have assiduously avoided mentioning that the Obama campaign has actively pushed many of the nastiest attacks on Clinton(Bosnia, RFK). And a search of salon itself finds that you haven't used the words "clinton, misogyny" or "clinton, sexism" in a single column since january.

As Mr. Greenwald so eloquently noted, this is a bad decision. As I have noted here, http://www.idealthoughts.com/2008/06/plea-to-barack-obama-return-to-your.html , Obama can lose my vote. To me this is not the "politics of change", but the politics of the same, and it is very dangerous. I posted my comments on my blog space on Obama's web site and can only hope someone reads it and has second, wiser thoughts.

I'd encourage everyone to follow your link in support your "GG 'race-boated'" [your term] HRC.

You reveal yourself as a buffoon.

The answer is so obvious. Follow Glenn's lead and approach and put your money where your mouth is as I have done and donate to the cause with as much as you can afford.

The answer is not to mistakenly elect another McWar when you are trying to send a message that will only explode in your and other people's faces.

The other choice that I have made is to put your time and money into helping a congressional candidate in your district get elected in a long time red district and then hold that candidate's feet to the fire if he starts to stray after getting elected.

The answer is not to do what I had been doing, sitting on my ass and bitching at the TV.

I attended a county Dem meeting this morning. What are you doing in the local politics arena?

A cursory reading of it shows that the FISA 'compromise' bill is terrible law. It is more of the, "I'm so frightened I'll tear up ever more pieces of the Constitution in order to be safe". It is exactly what we have had for the last 7 miserable years from both Republicans and Democrats. Senator Obama represents the hope for change so that people of courage will stand up against this cowardly attitude. He has repeatedly said that he would fight against just such an infringement of our Constitution as this FISA bill most assuredly is. The news is not good though. Early word has it that Senator Obama stands essentially in support of this bill except for the telecomm amnesty provisions.

He has said he will filibuster those provisions. Will he do so? This is his chance to do what he has said he would. Not next week, not when he is President, now. This is his moment in history to create real change. The question is whether he has the courage and foresight to act now.

Should he acquiesce and not fight, or even be completely ineffective, and his action will do a great deal to completely waste the faith of millions of progressives such as myself, people who have been inspired by his words and actions in the past and who have given freely of their time and often limited resources because he represents such a strong beacon of hope for the future. If Senator Obama fails to fight this with all his leadership and forcefulness, if he just signs off on such a tragically flawed bill, then how can someone like me begin to argue with someone who thinks he is just a normal politician who talks a great campaign, but when push comes to shove, when the chips are down, folds his tents, just as nearly every other sorry politician has in the recent past in the United States.

This is his first great historical moment. Please tell him my fervent hope that he does the right thing and defeat not only the provisions discussing the telecomm whitewash, but the many other tragically flawed parts of this bill. By fighting this he will reinforce for his supporters just why they have given so much to elect him because he represents real hope. He will also spike his detractors who say that he is nothing more than empty words, that he doesn't really stand for much of anything. This is his time to conquer magnificently or sputter into near irrelevance.

I'm sending him my best thoughts and energies so that he do the right thing for this, our United States.