A aqua colored humming bird just flew up to my outdoor view window. Badly Eagle.

Yes.

This is my last comment. The humming bird was not armed or wearing black combat boots.

A bird can soar and sing. The military Industrial Complex? Remember the old Ike Pa resident?

Dwight D. Eisenhower was the 34th president of the U.S., and nicknamed IKE. He was celebrated as a critic of communism but, and, Ike also cared about the future of America, HERE. Ike cared about waste in the military expenditures. He grew up in Kansas corn country and was a Republican. Ike was the Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces. His dear wife loved to garden. They both settled in Gettysburg Pa., the scene of past bloody carnage. The land is fertile rich. The Amish are tending the small amounts of healthy soil that can't sustain future population.

O Sanity!

In any case, I agree with Clark's comment that getting shot down and being a POW is not a necessary qualification for being president. But I can also see Obama's point: McCain's military service is simply off limits. The man served his country honorably and his military service should not be a campaign issue or held against him in any way.

I tend to agree with this but I also agree with Baldie that anything a candidate hangs his hat on during a campaign, is a campaign issue. McCain has clearly hung his hat on his military service during wartime as testament to his leadership abilities.

Having said that, I think the General's comments were pretty heavy handed and not as respectful as they could have been. It was almost like Clark was remembering his days as a ground pounder and expressing his disdain for those who fight wars high above the battlefield in the relative comfort of a cockpit and are able to return "home" each night to a soft bed and hot chow. His comment could have been stated much more elequently and had it been so, criticism could have been more easily deflected.

McCain never commanded doodly shit during the war. His main claim to command fame is based upon his command of the Naval training squadron at P'Cola, after the war. Such a command, while larger than most naval aviation commands, does not involve planning for enemy action, it's centered around training and as such, would give McCain about the same national security credentials as a school superintendant. He had absolutely no input toward national defense policy whatsoever and, if he were honest, this administration has basically ignored his input (for whatever reason) for its entire existance. What does that have to say about how the GOP really feels about McCain's expertise in military/defense leadership?

Nevertheless, no one should criticize McCain's wartime experience or mention the fact that he lost more aircraft than B-1 Bob Dornan. It serves no constructive purpose and gives the opposition room to run.

Maybe o care more about the telecom immunity thing vs, the 4th... a few reasons -

it's not for the retribution (The Craic!), it's for the discovery. The discovery process would probably have ended up being the only way to derive the truth of Who, What, When, Where, How & why.

my dark soul never trusts 4th amend. protection anyway... my dark ape soul (h/t GoodCelery!) stands ready to assert my rights (hah!) and get 'disappeared' in the process. Ask pedinska. Ask Sr. Timmerman.Ask Suffragette Lady Constance Lytton & Alice Paul. So it's a short-term hard ass tactical concern, the telecom immunity thing, not retributive. There is also precedent to consider & the granting of more obscene privilege to corporate personHoods than we regular Hoods would ever get.

I believe that most of the information which could have been discovered can still be gleaned through an honest investigation by the next administration. I understand the tactical aspects of why immunity is not desireable and I, too, am against immunity but if I had to choose between a permanent loss of constitutional rights, and the temporary loss of information relative to criminal activity - I'll take the former.

Still, it should not be an either/or situation and had the Democratic Congressional leadership (word used loosely) done their job(s), this wouldn't be an issue.

Please put down that greasy spoon.

Put it in the bowl of lime green Jell-o.

Try to not have any typos if you ever-ever!

If you ever decide to post again. Spell check.

c.h.e.c.k. Great. IQ? e.i.e.i.o. Great. You a fume.

(farmer?)

You need a good job? `qualified. Well. Spell farm?

eieio. and a oink oink here, a heehaw in the valley.

I must get-go.

bamage. Sing it!

agreed: it is not either or.
It did occur to me that at one point a doable compromise - leaving everyone equally UNhappy - would be a bill modification leaving the odious surveillance legislation in place (to be revisited by a later congress?) and stripping immunity provisions. Irrelevant now; not gonna happen.

You wrote in response to my post:

• "It would appear to me that you wish people should allow contrary positions on important issues to go unnoticed as long as that position is taken by someone who is considered as one of the good guys."

No that is not my point at all. My question to Glenn Greenwald and Salon is simply "Why is there a sudden hate-on for Keith Olbermann, here in Salon?"

In honesty, I suspect that Keith Olbermann's Special Comment was instigated by the original Greenwald article here on Salon. I cannot say it is the only reason for the Special Comment, but I do believe that the article did have some sway towards Olbermann's SC. Frankly, I can't think that one article in an online magazine or blog holds that much power to cause Olbermann come out with a pointed SC against Senator Obama, but it does seem contributory, if only in its timing.

My point is that Greenwald seemed more angry at Keith Olbermann, than at Senator Obama's capitulation to whatever forces made him decide to support the FISA bill as originally proposed last week. That, to me, makes little sense, in that it grants greater power to a commentator than towards the subject of the comments expressed. It also falls in line with the general tenor here at Salon in recent weeks in re Joan Walsh and her continued anger and angry blogs against Olbermann as the only commentator/journalist who was the most egregiously against Hillary Clinton in the primary season. She has become like a dog with a bone in her continued railing against Olbermann, and now it seems that Greenwald has taken up the same flag and run with it, hence the "cover story" objection of Olbermann, instead of a "cover story" objection of Obama for voting for the FISA bill with the immunity clause intact.

I was personally more incensed at Senator Obama for his yea vote for the bill, than at anything Olbermann or any other journalist/commentator who might have defended his action. In the end, the vote is more important than any comments made in support of it. I also saw, in Keith Olbermann's comments prior to his Special Comment, an Obama supporter, who was trying to see a reason for Obama's yea vote, as something other than a political stunt to seem more centrist, and therefore, more electable to the general population who has been brainwashed these 7+ years that any action or opinion against the Bush regime was automatically and de facto a vote against the so-called "War on Terror". And, much as I dislike such a move on the part of Obama, there is part of me that can understand that at this point in the race against McCain and the Bush regime, why a Senator Obama might have to make such concessions in order to win the general election. The rub, to me, and the hope that Olbermann and I seem to share, is that this was more than politics as usual, but that there could also be another reason behind the yea vote, and that once elected, a President Obama could do more to prosecute the criminals and criminal behavior of what would then been the "previous administration".

I also am fully aware of John Dean's association with President Nixon and the Watergate fiasco. I also am fully aware that he, alone, among "All the President's Men" testified against President Nixon and his advisors at the senate hearings. This would tend to prove that even someone who had taken part in something as destructive as Watergate, can see the light and change his errant ways. As anyone knows, who was alive and aware during Watergate and the aftermath, Dean was seen as a traitor and an opportunist in giving his testimony and was thoroughly vilified in the press at the time. But I ask this most important question "Can a person not change? Should a person's entire life be stained by his actions during one period in his young life be forever stained and never given a chance to rectify his actions? History has shown John Dean to have been the only member of Nixon's inner sanctum to not only have seen "the cancer that was the presidency", but to want to expose it and to apologize for his actions at that time and move on with his life.

Another point in my original post is that Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional attorney and therefore should be considered more of an expert on the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of such a bill, and that Olbermann, who is not an attorney, has to enlist the aid of someone who can help not only himself, but his audience, better understand any other reasons for Obama to change his mind on the immunity clause for the telecoms, and to posit possible future scenatios that would explain this turnabout. He chose Dean and earlier, Jonathan Turley to explain possible reasons for such an action. In my opinion, this was the more responsible course of action than to just come out with guns blazing and limited knowledge of the legal ramifications for the change in Obama's vote. When there was no answer from Obama as to his full reasoning for changing his mind on the issue, Olbermann, then, in very strong language, made his Special Comment and offered his opinion that Obama utilize his second chance, so generously given him by Harry Reid, to make right his yea vote and to realize that given this gift of time and a second, second chance, do the right thing, since paraphrasing Olbermann, "You will be damned by the Republicans no matter how you vote, so you might as well utilize the political capital that has already been spent." This course of action, should Obama, take it sits better with me, and hopefully the American public, than just going with the flow on a bill that will be defeated anyway.