Obama is not moving to the center. He has never been a progressive: soliciting money from oil and energy company executives and then rewriting legislation to make Exelon happy and voting for Cheney's energy bill; soliciting money from financial interests like Goldman-Sachs and voting AGAINST legislation that would cap interest rates at 30 fraking percent and claiming that Social Security was in big trouble (Goldman-Sachs wants to privitize it); touring with a homophobic preacher and calling for an expansion of Bush's faith-based initiative. The lie was his effort to appear liberal instead of a tool of corporate interests. After all, the first thing he did when he got to Washington was line up corporate money. See Harper's November 2006 article called

Barack Obama Inc.:

The birth of a Washington machine

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/11/0081275

He played the Democratic party, progressives, and the left for suckers, and once he got rid of the competition (his tactic in his first election in Chicago)he reverted to type, to the man who said in Nevada that the Republicans were the party of ideas. For his ideas/tactics he turned to David Axelrod, his campaign manager and a former "lobbyist" for Exelon, a greedy, sneaky energy company. Now we have two Republicans running for office. Unfortunately, he is not even a centrist. He is a corporate clone, a Bush in sheep's clothing, a compassionate conservative whose compassion will disappear in January. Those who swore by him will never admit they got taken because, like Bush, they find admitting error is way too painful, and, of course, they think it's too late to do anything about it.

he don't need nobody else.

Say good night gracie.

Thanks - the comments there were edited - would love to see the whole thing - but I'm pretty sure I know what he's saying about how he thinks his prior statements can be reconciled with the current position.

So anywhoos, some people just keep on playing the old tunes and singin' them.

http://www.banjohangout.ws/users/audio/red-rockin-25618-471043012008.mp3

No rebeccalouise.

Obama lied about FISA. He said one thing in February and is now saying something entirely different.

Should we not call him on it when he lies? Especially when it concerns something so fundamental as our Bill of Rights?

I am appalled at Barack's behavior on FISA for TWO reasons:

1. It weakens our Constitution.

2. He out and out lied.

Oh boy, am I uncomfortable with Sen. Obama's statement. I guess he's okay with being able to tell himself at the end of the day that he hasn't changed his position and that the "FISA court oversight" box has been checked off. Problem is, neither one of those excuses is satisfactory in my book.

As Glenn has pointed out numerous times in recent posts, approving telecom immunity is a change in the position that Obama expressed in the past. If he believes that he hasn't changed his stance, that certainly suggests that he misrepresented his position earlier. Lovely thought.

And Obama says he's satisfied as long as the FISA court is the entity with the oversight (rather than the Executive, etc.)? Well, he may be, but I'm definitely not. I'm not satisfied by what I see as a severe abridgment of my Fourth Amendment rights for nothing more than an assurance that a necessarily secretive court will look after things. If you want to curtail my constitutional rights, sir, you'd better damned well have a better deal for me than that.

I will never vote for John McCain (even leaving aside his myriad other flaws, his caving in on Bush's torture stance will always be a dealbreaker for me), but I grow less and less enamoured of Barack Obama with each passing day.

I would really like, at some point in my life, to be able to vote for someone instead of merely choosing the lesser of two evils.

Oh, who am I kidding?

This is the slippery slope of mixing religion and government that the Founders feared and there shouldn't be ANY tax dollars going to religious organizations, for any reason whatsoever.

Mom must correct you. At the Founding and well beyond, many states funded sectarian schools on an equal opportunity basis. The movement for public schools in the mid-19th century was driven by a number of factors, but a strong one was Protestant loathing of Catholics and the former's revulsion at the notion that Catholic schools might also be eligible for $$ from the public purse.

Public schools then for many decades taught Protestantism.

I have no quarrel with truly equal opportunity for faith-based agencies to receive indirect public funds. After all, I went to a Catholic law school on Stafford loans.

Ok. Let's dismiss who wins the selection this year. Doesn't matter.

Let's assume that the world suspends the day before the president takes office.

Ok, the FISA bill has passed and Bush, as foretold, has immunized the telecoms and three quarters of his staff (including Rove).

There are several questions that need to be thought about, deeply thought about.

Who would have jurisdiction over this new FISA law.

Can it be overturned?

Who would overturn it?

Is there any way to find out if you are being bugged?

Would having proof of being bugged be enough to alter the FISA landscape?

What are the chances that yet another Church Commission could be seated to address this horrible legal landscape?

Is there anything that the European Commission can do to be brought into this?

Could the EU bring sanctions against the US for this obvious threat to their commerce and national sovereignty? (It's my understanding, such as it is, that this FISA bill opens the pipe to the vacuum cleaner and everything gets sucked into it. Bush's 'black hole'.)

Shouldn't the corporations of the world be concerned that the 'data' sucked into the vortex could end up in the drawing room of a politically friendly corporation?

Isn't the fourth amendment pretty much gone anyway in view of the Bush administrations lust for cell phones and ipods and especially notebook computers of those crossing the borders?

And now for something completely different:

Late one night I stumbled upon a website that would allow someone to encrypt a string of text into an easily unencryptable block for use in signature lines. I've lost that URL. Anyone heard of it? Anyone got a link?

I did mine and I think it says like 'people that read other peoples emails for a fascist government suck dead rhino ass and how proud of this country the founding fathers must be'.

But anyway, I digress...

People that wish to answer these questions should use the same title and append their alias and then copy the questions and then answer them in the order presented. I'm very curious to see what the answers are.

I'm seriously less likely to support Obama because he seems to have craven idiots advising him but lets see if it's all that bad...

Have at it... Bring it on...