It's wise to hatetohaggle with a Red Snapper. The turtle tail drags across the scroll and makes it muddy.

Possums need to go outside and sweat. Pick up a pick and a rusty hoe. Pour French perfume on a fool.

Use good garden tools.

No growl like a black bear.

UT makes one want a beer.

What is your blog about?

Whatever topics I think are worth writing about. Democratic weakness and complicity in general has long been a topic I've written about -- it's a major theme of the book I just wrote, and it's been a topic of countless posts I've written over the years. It's not new.

What's new -- and apparently the reason you're noticing -- is that Obama, rather than other Democrats, is one of the targets of the criticism.

Glenn, you have done great work on FISA. So why is it "not worth" restating your case?

For exactly the reason that you said - I've made the case about FISA many times in the last two weeks and there was nothing in Olbemann's commentary that warranted a long exposition.

It seems you have entirely moved on (no pun intended) to making clear every single thing Obama has done wrong in your view since getting the nomination.

That's absurd hyperbole. Obama supported the Supreme Court's habeas corpus decision. I've written much about John McCain (including a post that led to a front page article in the NYT on his shift on Executive Power issues). Before that, I wrote several posts attacking the attempt to depict Obama as "anti-Israel."

He's shifted his posture the last two weeks and I'm hardly the only one to notice - or object.

You say that "blogs" sprang up as a reaction to the weak opposition of the past eight years, and that "blogs" have always taken weak Democrats to task. You need to be reminded that you don't speak for "blogs." "Blogs" are a rather broader category than you seem to understand. There are, in fact, conservative blogs. There are moderate blogs. The evildoers at The New Republic even have a blog. Several in fact. Some of us even read them without being brainwashed.

It's true that in the last couple of years, establishment media outlets have created what are, technically speaking, "blogs," but I'm referring to the group of online activists and outside-the-Beltway commentators that pioneered political blogging and offer a different perspective.

FISA is absolutely another story considering the promises Obama made. He shouldn't have made them, even though they were only with respect to telecom immunity. He should have been counted on to support a compromise; the problem is that it wasn't a compromise but a cave in led by Pelosi and Hoyer. Obama was trapped, but he wasn't going to show Nancy Pelosi up and make her into some kind of fascist authoritarian. So he supported the compromise/capitulation in the name of compromise on principle, and in support of his party leadership. It was certainly shameful but not only on Obama's part. And he hasn't voted for it yet.

How do you know Obama was "trapped" by what they did? How do you know he didn't approve of it ahead of time, or even that it was his campaign who went and demanded that a compromise be reached to take the issue off the table?

The willingness of so many people to invent fantasies like this about what happened to put Obama in the best possible light is exactly the reason I've been writing about this so much.

He appears to me to be almost ready to pardon the Bush Administration telling us we must move on in a new direction while he embraces most of Bush's policies.

I have no faith now that wee will get a lobbyist free national healthcare plan, or that NAFTA will change, that war will continue etc. Obama acts like one who is being bought already, refusing to stand with the principles he espoused so artfully during the primaries. He is doing just the opposite and I am quickly losing hope that there will be any significant change in America at all.

Better than McCain is quickly turning into "at least more tolerable" than McCain.

Whatever, and whoever is elected, the loyal GOPS, and those sold-out-associates in scams of Fellow-in-War-Crime, a Sign may likely hang by a rotten rubber band in the Closed-Bankrupt-Store, a hand written note that proclaims:

`

CLOSED---IT'S All somebody else's fault.

CLOSED---You did not buy the war tales.

That's true folks. GOPS request cold cash.

They'd know NO peace if it sat on a laptop.

a hopping bunny tale is fluffy. 'Um creepy.

It really has been an extraordinary two weeks, hasn't it? I simply stared at the announcement regarding his position on using religious belief as acceptable hiring and firing criteria when I saw it at Think Progress earlier. Although it's been parsed out since, I'm not sure what the effective difference is.

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/07/
obama_speech_we_can_expand_fai.php

I'm not really surprised, and I shouldn't have been. There have been many voices along the way during the primaries warning that Obama wasn't a progressive candidate (see L.W.M.'s archive). Or, that someone taking the positions he was taking was most unlikely to be a progressive candidate.

I was somewhat surprised by the position Kos took in response to Obama's attempt to denounce his allies (link at sig). Frankly, if Kos is withholding support, things must really be off the rails. I'm fairly amazed, however, that we appear to need a progressive candidate to defend the Constitution. That just boggles my mind. I would have expected that support to have come from the more Conservative flank. Not the Authoritarian Right, of course, but I wouldn't have guessed at the outset that the entire GOP in the House and Senate fit in that authoritarian framework.

I am in hopes that some inroads can be made within the Republican Party over time. I got a survey/campaign contribution letter from Marilyn Musgrave yesterday asking me to weigh-in on a list of issues in terms of their importance and whether I'd be willing to support her for re-election. In her letter she referenced a position she took which earned her the ire of the party seniors, and to which she held firm in the face of party pressure. I wrote her a letter in return spelling out a mix of traditionally progressive, and traditionally conservative, positions which I regretfully noted did not appear on her list. I acknowledged that, based on her survey, she and I didn't share much common ground. I wouldn't be donating to her campaign at this time, or offering volunteer support, but I would keep an open mind should some port of trade open up in the future. At this point, members of the GOP may be more amenable to supporting core American Values (like the Constitution) than the Democrats. What better way is there to distance themselves from Bush and the worst excesses of their own brand?

I fully expect the press to hammer Obama mercilessly on these issues. Paul Krugman wondered whether Obama was prepared for the post-primary period when he lost his favored child status.

What I always wondered, during the primary, was whether the Obama campaign was ready to deal with the post-primary environment, in which McCain would be the media darling, and Obama would lose his sheltered status and face the usual treatment.

So far, the answer seems to be no.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/wes-clark/

L.W.M. speculated in a comment I wish I'd bookmarked that the current Democratic Party was a mix of DNC, DCC and disenfranchised Republicans. IIRC, he speculated that was a tough group around which to form any kind of coalition. The party constructed that way pulls in too many directions to be effective in any of them. Which is why I've decided to keep my Unaffiliated/Independent status (despite some earlier qualms) and push my personal support in the direction of the Strange Bedfellows coalition.