I love the "witless bellicosity" comment. That fits Lieberman, particularly, so well! As well as the "gleeful warmongering". Klein is right on, and he shouldn't back down!

Posted at July 3, 2008 8:00 PM in response to Time's Joe Klein versus Foxman's Anti-Defamation League on THE NEOCONS! (Plus Clifford May Weighs In)

Why are the netroots foaming at the mouth, you ask? Because it's been so damn long since they won, they forgot how to win, and take the traditional posture of standing on the sidelines tearing down the candidates for not being their fantasy. Obama never was a fantasy - he has a background, a record, an agenda and a platform. Vote for him or vote for McBush, but get outta fantasyland, Democrats!

Posted at July 2, 2008 1:21 AM in response to The REAL Barack Obama--Unmasking the Beast

Loved it. It goes to show that if you balance "baaah" with "Manichean" you always sound just erudite enough!! :)

I always enjoy reading your stuff, Steve.

Posted at June 27, 2008 1:45 PM in response to Baaaaaahhhhh.

Gee, if that is some sort of satire on Obama I guess you missed that part where he told people he will make mistakes and his constituents will disagree with him, even vehemently. But I guess it's funnier without actually looking at actual things the candidate actually says.

Must be part of that hidden knowledge - it doesnt stand up to scrutiny.

Posted at June 27, 2008 1:36 PM in response to I Know More Than You Do

Steve,

Most assuredly. I think it will be quite some time, and a great deal of advance in law enforcement procedure, before any such repeal of the 2nd amendment is even on the table.

Posted at June 27, 2008 1:29 PM in response to The Supreme Court Erased 13 words from the Constitution...and nobody seems to care that much.

The reason we have a Second Amendment was because our nation was conceived in revolution against its parent nation. It was not only advisable but necessary, considering the bloody war for independence, for the far-flung nation, with a still-hostile neighbor (Canada remained the British Empire) to grant the right to firearms explicitly, for the purpose of raising citizen militias. But it was also to allow the states as individual nations in their own right, to resist the central government if they in turn felt it necessary to resist tyranny from the USA to which they belonged. This is in the nature of revolutionary governments.

Unfortunately we are no longer in a revolutionary period, and the amendment should give way to the present day reality that we have no hostile empire on our border and no homesteads to protect from internal or external incursion. The Constitution has been changed before, most notably after the emancipation of the slaves, to remove all of the language of ownership of slaves. So it's not like it can't be changed. It should be changed.

Posted at June 27, 2008 12:20 PM in response to The Supreme Court Erased 13 words from the Constitution...and nobody seems to care that much.

The problem I have with the big outcry on Obama's statement is that - the vote hasn't occurred, he has already said "it is not all we could hope for" and that he would work to remove immunity from it. What do you guys want, anyway? I would be a lot more worried about Obama's judgement if he pandered to the most progressive elements in the party instead of looking realistically at the fact that the bill is going to pass with or without his vote and that hammering out the best possible compromise bill and voting for that is the best choice in the current Congress. The netroots do not "own" Obama, he is a candidate for more than just the agenda of those who want to sock it to the telecoms. It is all well and good to take the principled stands of Dennis Kucinich and read 35 articles of impeachment, but you can see just how well Kucinich did in the primary.

Posted at June 27, 2008 11:30 AM in response to Obama's FISA Position--Practical, Not Expedient

Oh for heaven's sake, Larry, calm down. Not every little twitch or PR difficulty is going to "make us lose" and not every embarrassing moment is going to doom his candidacy. Look at his opponent, who has so many radical pastors the public can't keep track of all the wingnuts... he can't tell the difference between Shias and Sunnis, offering to drill the Gulf of Mexico into ruined beaches for absolutely no improvement in our oil crisis, and is offering to keep America in Iraq for 100 years and you think this minutiae is going to cause Obama to LOSE?

Posted at June 24, 2008 2:21 PM in response to Obamaniac Overconfidence

Here is my question: there is such a solid outcry from the netroots on this, I am wondering what Obama's purpose was in making an announcement in favor of the compromise while slipping in his comment about 'working in the Senate to remove the immunity provision', and it brings me to this question: was Obama polling his constituency ahead of his vote?

IF he gets a huge outcry from barackobama.com will that give him a grassroots mandate for a filbuster that he would not have had, if he had not released this intention beforehand?

Posted at June 22, 2008 8:43 PM in response to About FISA

As far as the first question, why does the death of one newscaster get so much attention, and 4,000 deaths in Iraq so much less? This is a media phenomenon seen again and again, and commented on at some length (with facts and figures) by Nicholas Kristof in his column a few months back. The more personal and up-close a news story is, the more readers respond to it. People respond to individuals and specifics, not generalities and groups. In fact, in one study, donors gave far less to help two children than to help one child, even when the children were named, because they could not as readily respond to the tragedy of two children's plight, as one, even though the suffering was twice as great, affecting more people. No one said it was rational.

Posted at June 17, 2008 10:03 AM in response to Going Overboard on Russert