A little late for these guys to be showing up now, but then again, in 2004 our media wasn't exactly asking for much proof of the Swiftboater's allegations either. They were just happy to give them a platform from which to slime the Democrat and let the ratings roll in, truth be damned.

I'm not worried about May's fundraising figures, but I'm pretty sure that June's numbers will indicate just how many states Obama can really put in play this fall.

Hell, I hardly care about voting, after the tragedy of Obama endorsing the FISA sell-out.

o for the love of god.

One statement and you're ready to commit hari kari. I bet you voted for Nader in '04, too.

Please quit expecting purity in candidates and politicians - there is no such thing. There is no such thing as a pure human being. Disappointment is the rule in politics - not the exception; just like in real life.

I'll just straight up admit here that realistically I never did think Congress could hold the telecoms responsible. The argument is too loaded in their favor - the president had the authorization from Congress to go to war. So we were technically at war and the president made his case to the telecoms that he had the right to ask them to do this, that it was vital for our national security.

Ok, they did what the President of the United States asked them to do in a time of war. Under those circumstances, it was always going to be very difficult to hold them responsible.

Holy Sh-t Eric!

Didn't you know that Hussein Obama is the 12th Imam?
http://home.att.net/~phildragoo/wsb/media/240742/site1119.JPG

I have been a long time lurker on TPM and have enjoyed most of all of your posts. But, your knee jerk reaction to what Obama stated in his FISA compromise was frankly a bit much. We are not going to like some of the things he does or says, but to behave like as though our world ended yesterday and the most egregious act was comitted is frankly over the top. Yes. It was disappointing and he is HUMAN and is likely going to disappoint us again. But, this is not the time to abandon him and I for one, however unhappy I am NOT going to stop myself from contributng to him, working for him and rooting for him. Not because the alternative is worse, but because I TRUST him. Yes. Trust. And in the past he has made me sad and disappointed but I have kept my faith in him and I will continue to do so because he has come through. I encourage all of you to perhaps put yourself in his shoes for a minute. He has to win and for that he needs, indies, dems, and repubs and in the general everyone moves to the center. I think O is still walking a leftofcenter line and I for one hope he carries it on through the next several months. Be angry but get over it and work as enthusiastically as you can. Don't lose the faith. He needs us desperately right now. The media, blogosphere and even some in his own party and the repubs is who he is fighting and let us not somehow contribute to that general feeling of animosity. Also, if you want a shred of sanity for surviving the weekend, DO NOT VISIT DAILYKOS. They have gone nuts there. Hopefully, someone with a calm head wil straighten them out.
Other than that, thanks so much for reading this post.

DO NOT VISIT DAILYKOS. They have gone nuts there.

In fairness, it was a short damn ride for some of them.

LOL!

I doubt I'll ever be able to forgive Hillary for her conduct during the primary, but if she wants to redeem herself at all she better get her ass in the Senate and filibuster that telecom immunity to the ground. I doubt she will, but that would be awesome.

Like I said, I don't know if it is possible for her to redeem herself completely, but taking on FISA would be the best thing she could do.

Not holding my breath though.

And I thought she was supposed to be on vacation until after the 4th of July break. That's what he campaign said...

I don't think Hillary can do anything in my eyes to redeem herself. If she does filibuster this bill she will seem like she is going against the nominee and the leaders of the party and would look pretty spiteful. Think about it for a moment. She is an eternal opprtunist and if she has stillnot come out and said anything or even taken a position, its becasue she is going to go along with it. Also, she needs Obama to pay off her debt, so may not want to cross himm just yet.

I'm heartbroken by Obama's seeming sellout on FISA, but of course I'll continue to support him. Just called the campaign. Took forever to get through. Told the operator that I'm a volunteer, like her, and asked her to convey my opinion that Obama needs to back a filibustered unless retroactive amnesty is stripped. Voting against the bill, alone, is not enough.

The person I am most upset with is Nancy Pelosi. I emailed her yesterday and told her that. I also told her that the DCCC better not ask me for any more money right now.

But Obama I do not blame -

*sigh*

And I wish all of you would stop a minute and consider this: Obama did not vote for the authorization to go to war. That's where every bit of this comes from. Once Congress handed that goddamn authorization to Bush, he had the right to step into a war footing with regard to the constitution. I hate it - but Congress is to blame here in the first place for authorizing it.

Look - The Repugs learned from Vietnam and the Democrats didn't. The Repugs did everything they could to avoid the Vietnam syndrome with the Iraq War, and the first they did was get a goddamn authorization from Congress. The Vietnam War was never authorized. Nixon, along with Eisenhower and Kennedy, never had or claimed war powers because of that war. But Congress went totally to sleep and handed the keys to the entire fucking structure to Bush and said in effect: "It's your call."

Once he had that authorization, we were fucked and I knew it then.

Thank God for some of you who are calm and collected and patient enough. That is why I love coming here. Yesterday, however, I was rather ashamed of the reaction as though Obama had committed some awful act. He did not write the bill, nor did he sponsor it. He probably has a good reason for what he is doing and he thinks mostly long term. Plus, all these guys are SD's that support him and the convention is still 2 months away. Who knows this might be sheer survival or something else. So, I am going to wait and see what he does. Now, he may "disappoint" us again, but isn't that what humans do to each other sometimes. Just work around that and we come out stronger and much more wiser. don't you think?

Lost in all this is Mccain's statement about Roe Vs Wade that he wants to overturn it. Wonder where Greg and gang are on that video. I saw that and the one where he said that "he was not proud of america till he was deprived of her". Let's keep our eye on the ball and not have taylor marsh and the NRO gang all smug with their I told you so's. There is nothing more I absolutely detest than that phrase.

What some of you are forgetting who are hoping that Hillary will filibuster the compromise FISA legislation is that she was in favor of the more onerous version that did not pass.

Either McCain or Obama are going to swamp America, with another AMNESTY proposal. That will legalize millions that taxpayers will be forced to support. Then millions more from third world countries will hop the border, looking for free handouts and nothing on earth will stop the rush.

Doesn't it make sense to endorse the SAVE ACT (H.R.4088) that would add real, razor sharp teeth to state immigration laws. We need more enforcement to stop the interdiction of drugs and illegal immigrants. Funding is being cut by the Democrats, so they can gut the border fence and stop the enactment of this law An army of ICE agents, twenty thousand more border patrol along with massive funding, to supply helicopters, spy probes and other equipment.

The e-verify data base the Fed's are using has a 90.5 success rate.Ice has a free tip-line: 1-866-DHS-2ICE for intelligence to locate illegal aliens, or predatory businesses that employ them. It would be a major deterrent against pariah employers, who hire illegal workers. Its pennies compared to what taxpayers are unknowingly spending now. Call your Democratic Representative (2022243121 ) to endorse the Federal SAVE ACT. NUMBERSUSA

Wow thanks for the positive comments today. I was really blown away by the Obama-bashing on this site yesterday. And then I read the fundraising amount for May, and I was very discouraged. Yes FISA is important to me, but bringing our soliders home is my first priority. And Obama is taking a lot of tough stands that I respect. I don't understand his FISA vote but I'm staying committed to building a coalition that can beat back the GOP. I'll give him the couch instead of the garage, because he has fought a hard campaign and probably needs the sleep. But he is still my candidate, and I will continue to give my small donation to him every payday. I hope many others will too...because we just cannot lose to McCain!

HusseinTenaX - Another thing the Republicans learned from VietNam is controlling the media coverage of the war. If people were seeing the atrocities of this war on television every night the way we did during the VietNam war, I don't think we would have any problem keeping our focus on beating the Republicans. Bush has insulated us from the war so much that we are untouched by the barbarism.

"Dude, it is one vote, and he isn't even on the wrong side, he just can't solve all of the problems in the world, grow up, quit being so naive".

Dude or Dudette: Look in a mirror. Obama had it in his power to stop that abomination, and he refused. Wise up.

Obama didn't even veto the FISA bill!!! Oh wait, he's not not even president yet. Never mind.

I'm not gonna beat around the bush, if you really feel the need to show just how much you love the constitution by ripping Obama do us all a favor and STFU.

You want Obama to turn into Dennis Kucinich all of a sudden? How many delegates did Dennis win to the convention? Obama has said he'll try to strip the immunity out of the bill. So has Harry Reid but even he's signaled it most likely won't happen.

My feet are sore, my face is sunburned
and I'm real sick of losers who think they know it all. I spent all day canvassing in the rain and then hot humid sun for more and better Democratic candidates including Obama and have little use for WATBs who do nothing but post on blogs just how disappointed they are in the guy who is still but one senator among one hundred.

Get over yourself. Most of you who post this garbage have never knocked on a door or called a voter for a candidate and you weren't about to start now. Purity trolls are useless.

I think we need to talk about how Obama's words at the Florida fundraiser are being twisted and spun into 'he is bringing up race'.

Senator Obama labors under a handicap that reeks of four centuries of unfairness. We all know what it is.

The drums of racism have started beating ceaselessly. Obama is “angry,” they say. His lovely, amiable wife is “angry” and “resentful.”

We all know what these words mean. They are code words for the sort of racist speech that is no longer acceptable in polite society. They are subtle echoes of the “Willie Horton” ad.

When twisting facts is not unfair enough, detractors make up “facts” that never happened. Obama is a Muslim, they say, even while castigating the “anger” and “racism” of his former Christian preacher in his former Christian church. He took his oath of office on the Koran, not the Bible. His wife, a woman of superb refinement who has worked with Caucasians all her adult life, used the crude epithet “whitey” in an unguarded moment.

It doesn’t matter how many times these lies are refuted. They echo endlessly on the Internet. The mainstream media delight in giving them credence by repeating them, even while purporting to deny them to maintain their own credibility. They know exactly what they are doing.

Murdoch’s goons on Fox News even accuse Obama of plagiarism. Those boorish philistines would sell their children to be able to write and speak as well as Barack Obama. Yet they accuse him of plagiarism!

John McCain’s own seething anger often lies just below the surface of his twisted smile. It is there for everyone with eyes to see. He has reason to be angry. He spent over five years in prison under torture and has never forgotten. Yet no one mentions his anger because he’s 100% white, even though it could affect his critical judgment as president.

I had hoped that he would do the honorable thing, just as John Edwards did. I had hoped he would say, and repeat often, “If you plan to vote for me because I’m white, or because you think Senator Obama is a Muslim, I don’t want your vote.”

That would have been easy enough to say. But McCain didn’t. He’s honorable enough not to repeat racist lies, but not honorable enough to disown racism conclusively, or the boost it gives his campaign.

For four centuries the poison of racism has infected our body politic. It is a potent and persistent poison. Every time we thought we had an effective antidote—the Civil War, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., the Civil Rights Act of 1964—it somehow managed to escape complete eradication.

The only real antidotes are time, education, familiarity with the “other,” and free speech. But the campaign calendar doesn’t give us the time to educate all the people whose unconscious, latent racism might deprive us of the greatest leader we have seen in forty years. Conscious racism is too persistent even to try.

So we have to pack effective education, familiarization and free speech for millions into the next five months. To do that Obama must have the biggest, brightest and loudest megaphone ever known to humankind. He must tell his own remarkable story even as he drowns out racist lies.

That takes money.

New Corp.’s second-quarter profit was $832 million; that’s over $ 3.3 billion per year. Its annualized revenue was over $ 34 billion. That’s the kind of money Obama is up against. And they want him, like David facing Goliath, to lay down his arms and pick up the slingshot of $84 million in federal funding. Not this time. Obama is no John Kerry.

Those who chastise Obama speak of fairness. But this country has not been fully fair to someone of his African descent for four centuries. Unfair and irrational racism lurks in the psyches of an unknown but still significant segment of our population. Obama’s opponents and enemies know this well; otherwise they wouldn’t be trying so hard to exploit it.

Fighting racism is not just a concern of “black” people, Democrats, or any minority group. It is a national necessity. If we fail to elect someone with Barack Obama’s self-evident superiority when we need him so much, we all—white, black, brown and yellow—may end up in the dustbin of history. And we will deserve it.

Money is the only way to fight back. It’s the only way to level the playing field. So dig deep. Give big.

Jesus Christ, relax. He's still the same Barack Obama who voted against cluster munitions, the same Barack Obama who opposes a meaningless gas tax holiday. A little perspective goes a long way.

markg8 and vissicitudes and rajapi - thank you. I sent my bimonthly donation last night to Obama's campaign, and I am proudly in it all the way to November. If there is anything Obama has shown, it's perseverence.

Than you Debra, vissicitudes, rajapi and all the others. It's frustrating to read all that crap we had here yesterday and today. In the real world canvassing today went great as did phonebanking all last week. Purity trolls in RL amount to less than .0001% it seems. I'd say 7 out of 10 people I've talked to that could - on paper - go either way are voting straight Dem in the fall.

But talking to deadend Repubs is the most fun. Today I interrupted a guy talking to his neighbor, didn't mean to, they were chatting in the driveway when I walked up so when they looked at me I introduced myself and handed him the candidate lit I was passing out. He was the guy I needed to see. I explained I was trying to ID Dem voters for my candidates and I had to ask him three standard questions to do that. This is simple stuff but some people steel themselves as if they are trick questions and I'm going to somehow magically change their party affiliation or something.

So anyway I asked him if he was planning to vote for the Dem House challenger Scott Harper for congress or the incumbent Judy Biggert who has voted with the Bush Administration over 80% of the time. Then Obama or McCain. And finally our Dem County Board candidates or the Repubs. He was real proud of himself, puffed out his chest and made a show for his neighbor about his steadfast support for Biggert. By the time I got to McCain she was chuckling out loud to him like "this guy doesn't get it". I just ignored her and his typical obsolete Republican bravado and pointed to the lit in his hand told him to check out the websites for more info. Then I thanked them for their time and wished them a nice day with a smile. They both had worried, even stricken looks on their faces when I left.

It's nice to let stupid people know with just a look, a knowing glance or a smirk that their party's reign is ending. Sometimes it's even more fun to act as if they've just told you it's perfectly reasonable to ride around on four flat tires for the next four months. Just say "really" like they've told you something not just surprising but literally crazy but you're too polite to say more. It irritates the hell out of them but also makes them wonder just how they got so out of step.

Excellent read this op ed and I think obama can pull it off:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/20/AR2008062002273.html

Forget about fisa there are much, much, much bigger issues at play here.

Here's why I believe I'm right about Bush, the telecoms and the Congressional authority to go to war. The SCOTUS changed the standard on unreasonable searches and seizures a number of years ago. There is now a "good faith" exception to evidence gathered via an unwarranted search and seizure. If the authority believe it was acting in good faith, the unlawfully seized evidence is allowed in.

Somebody show me how the telecoms can be held responsible in the face of a good faith argument? They are arguing correctly that they were acting in good faith because the president came to them with Congressional authority to wage a war and they were told this was necessary. They claim they acted in good faith.

How can you hold them responsible given the standard? I don't think it's possible and I think that is the least of the issue in the first place. It's not what the telecoms did - it's what Bush did that was wrong and it begins with lying his way into the authority.

Bottom line here is that this election is ours to lose and Democrats are infamous for going out of their way to lost elections on just this kind of bullshit.

There are a hell of a lot of things wrong here. Some telecom giants getting away with something is the least of what is wrong, IMO.

This country cannot stand another Repug administration. I don't want to lose this election. There's too much at stake.

I wish everyone would pull up their socks and get over this and get on with electing a progressive Democrat president so that we have the power to change these things that are wrong.

Everyone is all jiggied up our rights. The telecoms having or not having immunity does not have any affect on our constitutional rights. Our rights are guaranteed against government action. The telecoms have a decent good faith argument; it's the government that has acted in bad faith. Our quarrel is with Bush - not the telecoms. Whether or not telecoms can be sued or charged with an illegality has no bearing on our rights.

Those are only guaranteed against the government - so again - our quarrel is with the government - not the telecoms.