I want to take this opportunity to speak directly to those of you who oppose my decision to support the FISA compromise. ...
In a dangerous world, government must have the authority to collect the intelligence we need to protect the American people. ...
The ability to monitor and track individuals who want to attack the United States is a vital counter-terrorism tool, and I'm persuaded that it is necessary to keep the American people safe ...
Given the choice between voting for an improved yet imperfect bill, and losing important surveillance tools, I've chosen to support the current compromise. ...
Now, I understand why some of you feel differently about the current bill, and I'm happy to take my lumps on this side and elsewhere. ...
Democracy cannot exist without strong differences. And going forward, some of you may decide that my FISA position is a deal breaker. That's ok.
The boiling frog story states that a frog can be boiled alive if the water is heated slowly enough — it is said that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will jump out, but if it is placed in cold water that is slowly heated, it will never jump out.
The story is generally told in a figurative context, with the upshot being that people should make themselves aware of gradual change lest they suffer a catastrophic loss.
At least, that seems to be the hope of the lunatics at No Quarter.
Believe it or not, they are still obsessed with Obama's birth certificate - a document that has attracted nearly as much paranoid hyper-scrutiny as The Warren Commission Report.
The "magic bullet" in this case is the embossed seal on the certificate. Frankly, teh stupid is too dense for me to even follow the argument they're making. But as best I can tell, they seem to be saying that an analysis of the certificate in image editing software proves that there's cahootinizing going on with that seal.
NOTICE: In a spirit of friendly advice, I strongly suggest to anyone already prepared to attack me as "an Obama hater" to first read some of my comments prior to June 20. If you do, you'll save yourself some embarrassment. On the other hand, if you're one of those who will think "He must be a paid McCain troll who spent the last several months establishing a cover so he could try to divide us at a moment of vulnerability!", you're too paranoid to be reasoned with anyway... so flame on.
In another diary entitled "Why are some Obama supporters mad at Obama?", there was this exchange in the comments:
Given his vote for PATRIOT ACT renewal in '06 I'm neither surprised nor boiling mad. The PATRIOT vote was why I held out supporting him until the only other choice was Clinton.
Good grief. This is why democrats are so fucking good at losing. The left of the party likes to think they hold all the power and think that the rest of the country is liberal. And when they get proved wrong, they get all pissed off and vote for Nadar.
There was a recent diary - since deleted - that responded to Cindy McCain's recent jabs at Michelle Obama with a distasteful reference to Mrs. McCain's former dependency on prescription painkillers.
I'm not sitting in judgment. I've taken some cracks at Mrs. McCain myself. But in my better moments, I'm embarrassed that I did. And I try to discourage it now when I see it from others.
We can argue whether it is appropriate to mention Senator McCain's age or even ridicule its physical manifestations. There can be no argument over the appropriateness of attacking his wife.
Kagro X wrote a piece yesterday explaining how McCain - by not paying for the transportation he received from a private plane owned by his wife's company - broke the same campaign finance law that put Jack Abramoff in prison.
NOTICE: This diary extensively quotes No Quarter for the purpose of ridicule. If you don't want to read that, click the Back button on your web browser. Expressions of disapproval will be met with indifference.
OK, so a certain tape they promised would destroy Obama's candidacy has been repeatedly exposed as a figment of Larry Johnson's (a.k.a. Agent Flowbee) imagination - even by right-wing web sites.
But Susan Hu is no quitter! She's already launched Plan B... and this time the journalistic dynamite comes straight from the pages of The New York Times!
He is a careful reader of daily newspapers and magazines (titles from Foreign Affairs to Maxim are stocked on his campaign plane).
It was only three weeks ago that the First Lady of TalkLeft described Lanny Davis's proposed Michigan compromise - "Hillary gets all her delegates and some of Undecided's too while Obama gets zero" - as "eminently fair".
Until the Military Commissions Act is struck from the law books altogether, America will never be a free country. Until everyone who supported it is publicly disgraced, America will never be an honorable country.
But in the meantime, we have some cause to smile.
The Wall Street Journal:
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy isn't known for his judicial modesty. But for sheer willfulness, yesterday's 5-4 majority opinion in Boumediene v. Bush may earn him a historic place among the likes of Harry Blackmun. In a stroke, he and four other unelected Justices have declared their war-making supremacy over both Congress and the White House.
I know that many people advocate ignoring the NQ freakshow. I respect their opinion. However, I am not writing for them.
So pretty please with hot fudge on top, do not bother commenting along the lines of "You shouldn't have written this". You won't convince me and you'll look silly too.
I was going to title this "Erica Jong Has Lost Her Goddamned Mind". But then I remembered that she wasn't exactly a major thinker before.
I didn't know it would feel this bad. I didn't know it would feel this personal. I'm all for a united Democratic party. But losing my last chance to see a woman in the White House feels like shit. And the gloating by the press is even worse. It sounds like "I told you so." It feels like watching Joan of Arc burned at the stake. You can smell the burning flesh.
Coming right after our historic night of triumph in Minnesota... frankly, I'm devastated. I don't even know what to say.
I'll just let the photograph speak for itself.
This is going to be taken as an affront by every mainstream Christian in the country. By this evening, "Squirrelgate" is going to be everywhere. Saturation coverage on every cable news outlet. sigh...
We should never give up on Hope. Obama has taught us that.
Hours before the polls closed Tuesday in the final two Democratic presidential primaries, the Republican National Committee began circulating a video of Hillary Clinton questioning Barack Obama’s qualifications to be commander-in-chief, and acknowledging John McCain has this important presidential credential. ...
An RNC official tells CNN to expect to see more of Republicans highlighting Clinton’s critical comments of Obama as the campaign now turns to the general election phase.
I have a theory about what's going to happen this week. Hillary will announce, perhaps as early as Tuesday night, or Wednesday, that she's "suspending" her campaign for the nomination. She will not "concede" the race, and she will probably not endorse Obama either. She will announce that she is suspending her campaign, and the media will buy this as "Hillary has conceded," when she will have done nothing of the sort.
By suspending, she leaves open the possibility that she will jump back in at any time before the August convention, and she will leave open the possibility that she will still try to poach Obama's superdelegates between now and the convention. Part of the way she'll get around this is by announcing that the superdelegates have only just been giving all the information they need to make up their minds. I mean, after all, she'll say, we only just had the last primaries on Tuesday. How can the superdelegates really make up their minds in only a few hours. They'll need a good few weeks, maybe even months, to really let all the information percolate in their brains.
