http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080721/melber

or click on the signature.

Includes link

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6793

of open letter to Obama from the 20+K members of the Obama Vote Right on FISA group.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_authoritarianism

"The "right wing" in right-wing authoritarianism does not refer to someone's politics but to personality. It means that the person tends to submit to those they consider to be established authorities in society. In theory, these authorities could have either right-wing or left-wing political views. In North America, people who score high on the RWA scale tend to support conservative political parties, but in the Soviet Union, high RWAs tend to support the Communist Party."

I forgot; did he ever go to prison? Did anyone in the Bush Emporium ever go to jail?

What lesson can we learn from that? I suspect that most learn that the elected dictator may do as he damn well pleases to do, and it must be legal, since no one will even consider impeachment. Not even the little fish have to worry about impeachment. Damn, at least impeach an undersecretary of this-or-that!

What does it matter what the constitution says about the powers of the presidency? It is how it plays out in the real world that counts, not what they tell you in a government school civics class.

Do try to pay attention and keep up. It looks bad for your alleged intelligence to be two and a half years behind.-- Frankly, my dear, ...

His "alleged" intelligence is the same as Hussein's "alleged" WMDs.

It simply doesn't exist.

All of this talk about "the left," or the "hard left," as right-wingers call it, is daffy. There is no real left in America, and to pretend that liberalism is "the left" is quite a feat. I'm not saying everyone should answer this with "I'm not on the left." I'm saying how much the right has achieved in terms of setting the terms of discussion, making words say what they say they mean, etc. I think it's because "liberals" don't challenge those terms. And, unfortunately, the liberals in Congress have turned out to be much less liberal than anyone would have thought.

As for Obama, I don't think that he has the political stomach for the kind of battles that it would take to restore the rule of law, etc. I don't think he's about "Change." I think he's The Great Compromiser, and I'd be willing to bet that's what we'll hear more and more of from his campaign in the next few weeks. We'll hear about "unity" at the Democratic convention, lots of unity talk, America needs to come together blather, etc. It will be a cure for insomnia.

I think the Dems. rolled over for a reason, and it is not "he didn't tell us the truth." That's a child's vision of how the Congress works.

I'm the one who originally made the point that "these assholes" (Sunni & Shia) have been killing/wanting to kill each other for over a thousand of years. This is quite factually correct, as the original split occurred very soon after Muhammad himself passed the mortal coil, and has continued, on and off, as a religious war ever since (c. 1400 years).

The equally true fact of European colonialism and oppression of various "third world" nations in the subsequent centuries does not negate the truth of the former fact. The British and French, especially, are at fault in the Middle East for their reprehensible actions to the Arabs after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

So, back to my original point. We should leave Iraq, and leave them to their own devices. If they want to kill each other in a bloody civil war, I'll cry no tears. After all, in essence, the U.S. has been the target of Middle Eastern religious radicals for quite a few decades now, as a symbol, the strongest nation in "the West", though the proximate cause of the original Arab greivances was EUROPEAN powers.

Again, fuck 'em.

@noamnesty

Thank you for stimulating the idea to run ads. I am very anxious to see them. And Glenn, I'm glad that the Salon PR troops are working hard to maximize the effectiveness of the ads and get you more visibility.

You're welcome... and thanks for coming up with the practical suggestion for what to do with the idea.

Even if she didn't know that what she was saying was false, she also didn't KNOW that what she was saying was true.

To then make a statement on something you don't know about as if you did is another kind of lying -- particularly in the context she was speaking in. This is akin to the lies Bush told about Iraq.

Here's an example: my boss just asked me a question about some numbers in a report we did and I don't know recall what the answer is. If I then tell my boss the answer is X and it turns out I'm wrong, he has every right to ask me what the hell are you doing tell me X when you don't know?

There is something called the ethics of belief, famously summarized by William Clifford as, "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Clearly, since the evidence, as Glenn laid out, is so uniformly opposed to her claim there is no way she cold have done due diligence before making that claim on national tv.

You're being generous to shooter242 here, Frankly.
— Iokannan in the Well

I'm just trying to show him that "alleged" is a two-edged sword. Shooter insists that Bush's criminality is only "alleged" until it is proven by the State in a court of law and that the entire burden of proof is on the State. But the State can't bring Bush to book because Bush would just say L'État, c'est moi (at least he would if he knew what it meant).

By the same token, shooter's intelligence is only alleged until he demonstrates some evidence of it and the entire burden of proof is on him. Thus far in nearly three years on UT, there is not a soupçon.